THE   HI8TOEIGAL 


BRYANT 


LIBRARY 

UNIVERSITY  OF 
CALIFORNIA 

SAN  DIEGO 


THE  HISTORICAL 

MAN  OF  NAZARETH 


BY 
WILBUR  F.  i^BRY ANT 


.        .        .        l*be  stood  upon  Achilles' tomb, 
<And  heard  Troy  doubted:  time  'will  doubt  of  Rome. 

— Byron. 


Copyright 

WILBUR  F.  BRYANT 
1907 

Published 

1908 


Jacob  North  &  Co.,  Printers 
Lincoln.,  Neb. 


DEDICATION 

To  my  children,  Ita,  Ethel,  Eugene,  Donovan  Kleon 
and  George,  this  little  book  is  dedicated  with  the  precious 
legacy  of  my  faith. 

THE  AUTHOR. 


QUOTATIONS 

Satan  c'st  Chrislianisme. — Voltaire. 

Christiani,  Genus  Hominum  superstitionis  novae  el  maleficae. — 
Suetonius. 

The  greatest  and  most  sublime  of  reformers. — Loria. 
Sokrates  died  like  a  philosopher,  but  Jesus  Christ  like  a  God. — 
John  fames  Rousseau. 

Well  might  the  sun  in  darkness  hide, 

And  shut  his  glories  in, 
When  God,  the  mighty  Maker,  died, 
For  man,  the  creature's,  sin. 

— Isaac  Walts. 

The  records  of  humanity  present  nothing  that  can  be  compared, 
however  remotely,  with  the  life  of  Jesus. — Ranke. 
Ring  out  the  darkness  of  the  land, 
Ring  in  the  Christ  that  is  to  be. 
— Tennyson. 

The  blessed  word  evolution  will  not  account  for  everything. — 
Oman. 

And  behold  I  am  with  you  all  the  days,  even  to  the  consum- 
mation of  the  age. — Christ  Plimself. 

Do  not  disgrace  yourself  as  a  philosopher  by  presuming  to  judge 
on  questions  you  have  never  examined. — Newton. 

Whatever  resemblance  there  may  be  between  the  Hottentot  and 
the  monkey,  the  interval  which  separates  is  immense. — Buffon. 

Their  first  lawgiver  taught  them  that  they  were  all  brothers, 
when  once  they  had  committed  themselves  so  far  as  to  renounce 
the  gods  of  the  Greeks,  and  worship  the  crucified  sophist  and  live 
according  to  his  law. — Lucian. 

And  if  Christ  is  not  raised,  your  faith  is  vain,  ye  are  yet  in 
your  sins.  Then  they  also  that  are  fallen  asleep  in  Christ  are 
perished.  If  in  the  life  only  we  have  hope  in  Christ,  we  are  of 
all  men  most  miserable. — Paul. 

A  Jewish  peasant  changed  the  religion  of  the  world,  and  that 
without  force,  without  power,  without  support,  without  one  nat- 


0  QUOTATIONS 

ural  source,  or  circumstance  of  attraction,  influence  or  success. 
Such  a  thing  hath  not  happened  in  any  other  instance. — Paley. 

Much  profane  wit  has  been  expended  on  the  miraculous  means 
of  Jonah's  deliverance.  ...  It  requires  less  faith  to  credit  this 
simple  excerpt  from  Jonah's  biography  than  to  believe  the  numer- 
ous hypotheses  that  have  been  invented  to  deprive  it  of  its  historic 
character. — McClintock  and  Strong. 

If  a  heathen  come  in,  and  hear  you  speak  with  several  tongues, 
will  he  not  say  that  you  are  mad?  and  certainly,  it  is  little  better 
when  atheists  and  profane  persons  do  hear  of  so  many  discordant 
and  contrary  opinions  in  religion ;  it  doth  avert  them  from  the 
church,  and  maketh  them  to  sit  down  in  the  chair  of  the  scorners. — 
Bacon. 

The  theologian  may  indulge  the  pleasing  task  of  describing  re- 
ligion as  she  descended  from  heaven,  arrayed  in  her  native  purity. 
A  more  melancholy  duty  is  imposed  upon  the  historian.  He  must 
discover  the  inevitable  mixture  of  error  and  corruption  which  she 
contracted  in  her  long  residence  upon  earth,  among  a  weak  and 
degenerate  race  of  beings. — Gibbon. 

Holy  Scripture  and  nature  are  both  emanations  from  the  Divine 
word;  the  former  dictated  by  the  Holy  Spirit,  the  latter,  the 
executrix  of  God's  command.  ...  I  believe  that  the  intention 
of  Holy  Writ  was  to  persuade  men  of  the  truths  necessary  to 
salvation :  such  as  neither  science  nor  other  means  could  render 
credible,  but  only  the  voice  of  the  Holy  Spirit.  But  I  do  not 
think  it  necessary  to  believe  that  the  same  God  who  gave  us  our 
senses,  our  speech,  our  intellect,  would  have  us  put  aside  the  use 
of  these,  to  teach  us  such  things  as  with  their  help  we  could  find 
out  for  ourselves. — Galileo. 

Sic  etiam,  secundum  ipsos,  in  sacris  libris,  plurima  in  re  scien- 
tifica  vel  historica  errore  afficiuntur.  Sed,  inquiunt,  non  ibi  de 
scientiis  agi  ant  historia,  verum  de  religione  tantum  ac  re  ntorum. 
Scientiae  illic  et  historia  integumenta  sunt  quaedam,  quibus  ex- 
perientiae  religiosae  et  morales  obteguntur  ut  facilius  in  vulgus 
propagarentur  ;  quod  quidem  vulgus  cum  non  aliter  intelligent, 
perfcctior  illi  scientia  out  historia  non  utilitati  sed  nocumento 
fuisset. — Encyclical  on  Modernism. 

In  the  sacred  books  there  are  many  passages  referring  to  science 
or  history  where  manifest  errors  are  to  be  found.  But  the  subject 
of  these  books  is  not  science  or  history,  but  religion  and  morals. 


QUOTATIONS  7 

In  them  history  and  science  serve  only  as  a  species  of  covering 
to  enable  the  religious  and  moral  experiences  wrapped  up  in  them 
to  penetrate  more  readily  among  the  masses.  The  masses  under- 
stood science  and  history  as  they  are  expressed  in  these  books, 
and  it  is  clear  that  had  science  and  history  been  expressed  in  a 
more  perfect  form,  this  would  have  proved  rather  a  hindrance 
than  a  help. — Translation  of  the  foregoing. 

That  such  a  person  as  Jesus  Christ  existed,  and  that  he  was 
crucified,  which  was  the  mode  of  execution  in  that  day,  are  his- 
torical relations  strictly  within  the  limits  of  probability.  He 
preached  most  excellent  morality,  and  the  equality  of  man ;  but 
he  preached  also  against  the  corruption  and  avarice  of  the  Jewish 
priests,  and  this  brought  upon  him  the  hatred  and  vengeance  of 
the  whole  Jewish  priesthood.  The  accusation  which  these  priests  • 
brought  against  him  was  of  sedition  and  conspiracy  against  the 
Roman  government,  to  which  the  Jews  were  then  subject  and 
tributary;  and  it  is  not  improbable  that  the  Roman  government 
might  have  some  apprehensions  of  the  effect  of  his  doctrines  as 
well  as  the  Jewish  priests.  .  .  .  Between  the  two,  however, 
this  virtuous  reformer  and  revolutionist  lost  his  life. — Thomas 
Paine. 


EPISTLE  DEDICATORY 

Dear  Donovan: 

Because  of  your  serious  temperament,  this  letter  is  ad- 
dressed to  you.  Possibly  some  parts  of  it  may  not  be 
understood  now.  But,  when  vixit  is  all  which  remains 
of  the  writer,  read  this  as  the  words  of  your  departed 
father  addressed  to  one  in  whom  he  feels  the  deepest 
interest.  It  may,  or  may  not,  be  what  I  would  say  could 
I  speak  from  the  tomb,  but  it  is  written  according  to  my 
present  light. 

The  existence  of  God  ought  to  be  a  moral  certainty  to 
every  reflecting  mind.  The  belief  in  one  God — a  God  as 
distinct  from  the  material  universe  as  the  builder  of  a 
temple  is  from  the  temple  itself — is  as  firmly  fixed  in  my 
mind  as  the  consciousness  of  my  own  existence.  Yes,  it 
is  a  belief  in  one  supreme,  personal,1  self -existent,  omnis- 
cient, omnipotent,  omnipresent  God,  existing  from  eter- 
nity to  eternity,  without  body  parts  or  passions.  Do  not 
confound  a  personal  God  with  an  anthropomorphic  God 
— the  God  of  the  ancient  Israelite  and  those  moderns,  the 
Adventist  and  the  Mormon,  a  God  with  hands  and  feet, 
a  God  with  the  faculties  of  memory  and  reason.  No,  all 
these  imply  limitation  of  presence,  power  and  knowledge. 
It  is  freely  confessed  that  God  is  incomprehensible.  Were 
he  otherwise,  I  could  not  believe  in  Him,  as  God.  But  a 
belief  in  any  other  God  than  the  one  defined — call  it  by 
what  fine  name  you  may — is,  to  my  mind,  practical  athe- 
ism. David  Hume2  who,  I  am  sorry  to  say,  is  now  chiefly 

JA  person  is  an  individual  substance  of  a  rational  nature. — 
Boethus. 

'See  note  at  the  end  of  this  letter.— W.  F.  B. 


IO  HISTORICAL  MAN  OF  NAZARETH 

remembered  for  his  attacks  upon  supernatural  religion, 
says  in  his  Natural  History  of  Religion: 

"To  any  one,  who  considers  justly  of  the  matter,  it  will  appear 
that  the  gods  of  all  polytheists  are  no  better  than  the  elves  and 
fairies  of  our  ancestors,  and  merit  as  little  any  pious  worship  or 
veneration.  These  pretended  religionists  are  really  a  kind  of  super- 
stitious atheists,  and  acknowledge  no  being  that  corresponds  to 
our  idea  of  a  deity." 

Yes,  from  the  very  nature  of  God,  it  is  impossible  there 
could  be  another  like  him. 

A  savage  of  the  stone  age,  looking  at  a  metallic  clock, 
seeing  the  movement,  hearing  the  tick  of  the  second  and 
the  stroke  of  the  hour,  would  believe  the  clock  a  living 
thing,  if  he  reasoned  as  the  pantheist1  reasons.  But,  if 
he  adopted  the  logic  of  the  materialist,  he  might  philoso- 
phise as  follows : 

"This  thing  is  governed  by  certain  immutable  laws;  these  laws 
are  inherent;  ergo,  it  is  impossible  to  conceive  of  the  material  of 
the  thing  as  distinct  from  the  force  that  moves  it,  and  vice  versa, 
the  impossibility  recurs.  Hence  it  is  obvious  that  they — the  ma- 
etrial  and  the  force — are  inseparable.  I  can  not  destroy  the  material 
of  which  this  thing  is  made.  The  force  can  not  exist  apart  from 
the  material,  or  the  material  apart  from  the  force.  The  material 
and  the  force,  together,  constitute  the  thing  which  I  see.  No  one 
could  have  made  this  thing,  for  it  might  have  been  possible  to  have 
made  a  better  thing  than  this  thing  is.  The  thing  never  having 
been  made,  the  material  being  indestructible  and  the  material  and 
the  force  being  inseparable,  this  thing  has  existed  from  and  will 
exist  to  eternity.  It  never  had  a  maker,  and  it  runs  itself  by  certain 
immutable  and  inherent  laws,  which  no  one  made." 

Wild  as  this  reasoning  may  appear,  it  is  a  fair  epitome 
of  Biichner's  Kraft  mid  Stoff,  if  we  but  substitute  "ma- 
terial universe"  for  "clock." 

My  son,  you  have  amused  yourself  with  soap-bubbles. 
You  know  what  they  are.  The  Methodist  Bishop  War- 

'See  note  at  end  of  this  letter. — W.  F.  B. 


EPISTLE  DEDICATORY  1 1 

ren,  has  compared  our  earth  to  an  enormous  soap-bubble 
suspended  in  space,  as  the  ordinary  bubble  is  suspended 
in  the  air.  If  the  great  Humboldt  was  right,  that  is  to 
say,  .if  the  world  is  a  ball  of  fire  covered  by  a  shell,  thin- 
ner accordingly  than  an  eggshell,  then  Dr.  Warren's  com- 
parison is  not  a  bad  one.  Professor  Loomis  thought 
sufficient  steam  might  be  generated  in  the  earth  to  blow 
it  to  atoms.  I  remember  an  allegory  of  Victor  Hugo's 
in  Napollon  /<?  Petit.  He  imagines  himself  and  his 
reader  in  Russia ;  the  Neva  is  frozen  over ;  men  go  upon 
the  ice,  improvise  and  build  a  city;  they  stamp  upon  the 
ice,  it  is  solid  as  rock,  and  they  shout,  "Long  live  ice." 
But  the  sun  returns  and  with  it  spring,  and  the  break-up 
of  the  river  follows,  bringing  horror  and  destruction. 
Standing  upon  the  earth,  we  know  not  what  is  beneath 
our  feet. 

But  this  is  not  all.  You  have  seen  a  railroad  train 
moving  at  the  rate  of  sixty  miles  an  hour — a  mile  a  min- 
ute. If  you  ever  rode  at  that  rate,  you  felt  safe  only  be- 
cause you  trusted  the  engineer.  Think  of  this  earth — 
soap-bubble,  steam  calliope  or  whatever  it  is — traveling 
about  the  sun  at  the  rate  of — not  one  mile — 1,110  miles 
a  minute,  eighteen  and  one-half  miles  at  every  tick  of  the 
clock,  and,  in  this  space  of  time,  it  deviates  from  a 
straight  line  only  1/9  of  an  inch,  so  immense  is  the  earth's 
orbit.  At  the  same  time  it  is  moving  with  the  sun  about 
some  unknown  centre,  at  the  rate  of  eight  miles  a  second. 
And  this  is  not  all.  Traveling,  like  a  spinning  top,  not 
upright,  but  with  an  inclination  of  23^2  degrees,  it  whirls 
on  its  own  axis  at  the  speed  of  1,000  miles  an  hour.  In 
its  journey  about  the  sun,  it  never  takes  the  same  path 
twice.  At  times  it  slacks  its  speed.  Then,  like  a  living 
thing  that  has  recovered  its  breath,  it  speeds  on,  swifter 
and  swifter;  again,  as  if  wearied,  it  lags.  With  its  htm- 


12  HISTORICAL  MAN  OF  NAZARETH 

dreds  of  active  volcanoes  and  thousands  of  spouting  gey- 
sers, an  onlooker  might  be  pardoned  for  mistaking  it  for 
a  great  steam-engine.  But,  regardless  of  distance  and 
variant  speed,  it  completes  each  circuit,  always  to  a  sec- 
ond, in  the  same  space  of  time.  The  young  Jew  in  King- 
sley's  Hypatia  asks  himself  if  the  earth  is  not  a  huge 
animal  and  man  a  parasite.  Had  he  known  all  that  Co- 
pernicus, Galileo,1  Kepler,1  Newton,1  Bradley1  and  Struve 
have  taught  us,  his  semi-pantheistic  reflection  might  have 
made  him  a  theosophist.  But  the  tale  is  not  yet  told. 
Concurrently  with  these  divers  revolutions,  systemic,  so- 
lar and  axial,  the  earth  performs  that  St.  Vitus  dance 
which  men  call  nutation,  that  is  to  say,  the  pole  of  the 
earth  nods  to  the  pole  of  the  ecliptic  1,400  times  in  one 
revolution.  Add  to  all  these  the  unexplained  phenomenon 
of  the  variation  of  latitude.  This  we  know  results  from 
the  change  of  the  location  of  the  terrestrial  pole.  If  this 
proves  the  earth  an  elastic  ball,  it  brings  to  mind  Dr. 
Warren's  soap-bubble  theory ;  but  it  is  claimed  as  an  ar- 
gument for  the  earth's  solidity.2  All  these  antics  of  our 
earth  have  such  regularity  that  their  recurrence  can  be 
predicted.  Yet  this  soap-bubble,  hanging  upon  nothing 
and  flying  about  with  more  diverse  motions  than  a  umiak 
in  a  maelstrom,  is  our  home.  Are  we,  in  railroad  par- 
lance, taking  a  free  ride  on  a  wild  engine?  Is  there  no 
God?  Atheism  is  the  gospel  of  despair.  No,  Kepler's 
laws  must  have  an  enacting  clause — the  fiat  of  the  Eter- 
nal. There  is  a  God  who  holds  this  chemical  engine  filled 
with  explosives  in  the  hollow  of  his  almighty  hand.  I 
care  not  whether  he  governs  by  fixed  laws,  or  by  a  con- 
tinuous and  universal  providence.  The  discussion  is 

JSee  note  at  end  of  this  letter.— IV.  F.  B. 

'Read  the  citation  of  Bishop  Watson's  remark  on  the  geologist 
in  the  main  text. — W.  F.  B. 


EPISTLE  DEDICATORY  13 

profitless.  Whether  he  be  the  clock-maker  or  the  helms- 
man is  immaterial.  The  earth  passes  equal  areas  in  the 
same  space  of  time  without  reference  to  lineal  distance. 
Hence  the  difference  in  the  rate  of  speed.  We  call  this 
fact  Kepler's  second  law.  The  philosophic  savage  before 
mentioned,  noting  that  the  hands  of  the  clock  moved  over 
equal  lineal  distances  in  equal  spaces  of  time,  might  call 
this  phenomenon  law,  and  himself  an  agnostic,  and  not 
cut  as  sorry  a  figure  as  the  skeptic  gazing  upon  the  eter- 
nal clockwork  of  the  skies.  The  argument  for  a  maker 
of  the  universe  is  stronger  than  the  argument  for  the 
maker  of  the  clock.  The  latter  is  a  clumsy  imitation  of 
the  former.  This  argument  from  design  is  as  old  as 
Sokrates,  and,  since  his  day,  has  been  repeated  by  num- 
berless philosophers,,  from  Paul  to  Paley.1 

And  now  come  an  army  of  philosophers  to  tell  us  that 
Sokrates,  Paul  and  Paley  are — in  the  slang  of  the  day — 
back  numbers.  I  have  been  expecting  the  antithesis  of 
Milton  would  appear  to  sing  the  ascent  of  man,  instead 
of  his  fall.  I  can  imagine  the  invocation  of  his  muse. 
Instead  of  "Man's  first  disobedience,"  we  would  have: 

"Man  is  a  biped  of  celestial  shape, 
A  cross  betwixt  the  angel  and  the  ape. 
That  man  was  fashioned  from  a  clod  of  earth 
Bak'd  in  the  heat  of  an  Assyrian  dearth, 
No  son  of  science  in  this  age  believes, 
And  none  but  bigot  in  his  mind  conceives. 
How  man  from  monad  did  primeval  spring, 
Through  all  gradations,  help,  O  muse,  to  sing." 

Peace  to  the  ashes  and  glory  to  the  names  of  our  illus- 
trious ancestors,  the  pismire  and  the  tadpole! 

The  scientific  skeptic  will  tell  you  that  his  sole  quest  is 
truth.  If  he  would  only  stop  with  the  truth!  But  you 

1  See  note  at  end  of  this  letter. — W.  F.  B. 


14  HISTORICAL  MAN  OF  NAZARETH 

will  find,  on  closer  acquaintance,  that  no  class  of  men — 
not  even  the  poets — have  such  fructifying  imaginations 
as  scientists.  The  scientist's  zeal  for  his  science  stimu- 
lates his  imagination  into  morbid  activity.  The  astron- 
omers point  to  the  waxing  and  waning  polar  caps  of 
Mars,  to  Schiaparelli's  canals  and  to  the  changing  color 
of  the  alleged  oases,  and  jump  ta  the  conclusion  that  the 
planet  is  inhabited  by  a  race  of  Brobdingnags  who  have 
constructed  a  system  of  public  works,  beside  which  the 
seven  wonders  of  the  world,  the  Chinese  wall,  the  trans- 
continental railroads,  the  sub- Alpine  tunnels,  the  pyramid 
of  Cholula  and  the  puny  attempts  at  irrigation  by  the 
Incas  and  Lombards,  all  combined,  pale  into  lilliputian 
nothingness.  I  freely  admit  that  those  geometric  figures 
traced  on  a  continental  blackboard,  though  no  more  won- 
derful than  what  the  microscope  reveals  in  every  crystal, 
are  not  readily  explained  as  natural  phenomena.  It  is 
settled  that  they  are  not  optical  illusions.  But  the  mean 
temperature  of  Mars  is  2  degrees  below  that  of  Uper- 
nivik.  Is  not  the  burden  of  proof  upon  the  man  who 
asserts  the  probability  or  utility  of  irrigation  in  a  climate 
whose  mean  temperature  is  36  degrees  Fahrenheit?1 
Grizzly  bears  are  poor  civil  engineers,  and  the  culture  of 
Iceland  moss  would  hardly  demand  or  justify  the  em- 
ployment of  an  army  of  Herculeans  in  a  task  whose  cost 
would  bankrupt  a  planet.  I  have  not  spoken  of  the  objec- 
tion of  Stoney,  the  Irish  physicist,  to  this  canal  theory, 
based  on  the  kinetic  theory  of  gases.  He  claims  that 
water  can  not  exist  on  Mars. 

Geologists  have  read  the  pre-Adamic  man  into  the 
strata  of  the  earth.  Now,  allow  me  to  suggest  how  much 
some  of  this  may  be  worth.  Perhaps  you  have  read  in 

*But  Professor  Percival  Lowell  says  48  degrees.  See  his  article 
in  McClure's  Magazine  for  December,  1907. — W.  F.  B. 


EPISTLE  DEDICATORY  1 5 

the  account  of  the  San  Francisco  earthquake  of  last  year 
how  a  herd  of  cattle  sank  in  a  fissure  which  opened  in 
the  earth  and  which  closed  over  them.  How  deep  did 
they  sink?  Echo  answers:  "How  deep?"  Suppose  they 
had  been  men,  would  such  a  happening  account  for  the 
finding  of  a  Calaveras1  or  a  Neanderthal  skull2  a  thou- 
sand years  hence? 

The  ablest  plea  for  the  pre-Adamite  which  I  have  ever 
read  is  Man  in  the  Past,  Present  and  Future,  by  the 
German  materialist  Biichner.  The  industry  of  this  au- 
thor in  the  collection  of  facts  is  certainly  praiseworthy, 
but  his  deductions  are  as  gross  a  non-sequitur  as  the  dis- 
course of  the  grave-digger  in  Hamlet.  Perhaps  I  am  a 
bigot,  but  I  can  not  avoid  the  conclusion  that  these  men 
are  trying  to  escape  the  stain  of  original  sin  by  extending 
their  pedigree.  And  I  am  disgusted  with  the  Christian 
writers  who  will  try  to  manufacture  a  theological  mer- 
maid in  their  vain  endeavor  to  attach  that  monkey-theory 
to  revelation.  It  is  something  which  is  not  sustained, 
even  by  prima-facie  evidence.  You  will  find  the  unbe- 
lievers more  credulous  than  the  believers.  Some  time 
you  will  read  about  the  Cardiff  giant.3  Remember  the 

'See  picture  and  account  of  this  skull,  which  is  preserved  in 
the  Peabody  Museum  in  Harvard  College,  in  Winsor's  Critical 
History  of  America,  volume  1,  page  385.  But  read  Holmes's  ac- 
count in  Smithsonian  report  for  1901.  Holmes  and  McGee,  it 
would  seem,  have  left  little  to  console  the  pre-Adamite  theorists. — 
W.  F.  B. 

2  Discovered  in  1856,  near  Hochdal,  Germany.  I  have  seen  so 
many  contradictory  accounts  of  the  locality  and  circumstances  of 
the  discovery  that  I  know  not  what  to  credit.  This  skull  has  been 
credited  by  different  scientists  to  everything,  from  an  idiot  to  an 
ape.  You  can  find  an  account  of  this  skull  in  almost  any  work  on 
palaeontology. — W.  F.  B. 

8  Dug  up  in  October,  1869.  Tt  imposed  on  many  scientists,  but 
turned  out  to  be  the  work  of  a  rude  stonecutter,  and  a  greater 
fraud  than  the  wild  men  from  Borneo.  See  article  by  Andrew  D. 
White,  Century,  volume  LXIV.  New  series  XLII,  pages  948-955. 
— W.  F.  B. 


l6  HISTORICAL  MAN  OF  NAZARETH 

name,  and  remember  your  father  when  you  read  the  ac- 
count. The  cave  of  Aurignac1  is  inconsistent  with  what  ? 
Usher's  chronology — that  is  all. 

Boucher  de  Perthes2  and  those  who  came  after  him 
have  produced  some  evidence  of  a  very  early  man.  Bel- 
larmine  said,  three  hundred  years  ago,  that  if  the  Coper- 
nican  theory  of  the  universe  was  scientifically  established, 
revelation  would  have  to  be  copernically  interpreted.  So 
I  think  about  the  claim  of  Boucher  de  Perthes.  I  have 
no  doubt  of  the  truth  of  revelation.  Let  us  cross  the 
other  bridge  when  we  arrive  at  it. 

It  is  not  my  purpose  to  wander  from  the  subject  in 
ridiculing  science,  as  such.  But  the  tendency  of  modern 
scientists  is  towards  agnosticism.  I  have  written  of  the 
Martian  canals,  the  Calaveras  skull,  etc.,  as  illustrating 
the  untrustworthy  quality  of  some  scientific  deductions. 
They  tell  us  that  Paley's  Natural  Theology  is  not  up-to- 
date,  because  it  assumes  that  some  ultra-mundane  being 
made  man  exactly  as  he  is  and  placed  him  in  the  world 
exactly  as  it  is,  ergo,  it  does  not  meet  the  modern  theory 
of  evolution.  Now,  I  am  not  going  to  attack  evolution, 
for  I  believe  in  it,  myself,  to  a  limited  extent.  Let  us 
meet  these  people  with  a  reductio  ad  absurdum. 

The  existence  of  our  sun  is  an  impossibility,  and  I  will 
prove  it  by  a  stronger  argument  than  any  agnostic  ever 
advanced  against  the  hypothesis  of  a  God.  If  we  allow 
a  cube  of  ice  of  given  dimensions  to  be  melted  in  the 
sun  at  a  place  of  mean  terrestrial  temperature,  we  can 
determine  the  number  of  heat  units,  the  length  of  time 


lThe  cave  of  Aurignac,  in  the  department  of  Haute  Garonne, 
France,  was  discovered  in  1852.  The  time  at  which  seventeen 
skeletons  found  therein  were  living  human  beings  has  been  vari- 
ously estimated. — W.  F.  B. 

'See  note  at  end  of  this  letter.— W.  F.  B. 


EPISTLE  DEDICATORY  17 

and  the  amount  of  coal  combustion  requisite.  Then  let 
us  imagine  a  circular  shell  of  ice  of  the  thickness  of  the 
cube  about  our  sun  at  the  distance  of  this  planet.  The 
amount  of  heat  thrown  from  the  sun  into  space  in  any 
given  time  is  thus  easily  determined;  and  we  learn  that, 
had  that  sun  been  made  of  anthracite  coal,  it  would  have 
burned  out  in  less  time  than  popular  chronology  assigns 
to  human  history.  There  is  no  rational  theory  for  sup- 
plying its  heat.1  The  existence  of  such  a  thing  as  a  sun 
is  absurd — there  it  is  in  mid-heaven. 

The  existence  of  a  God  proved,  the  way  is  easy.  He 
must  have  made  man  for  a  purpose.  There  is  no  more 
practical  question  than  the  relation  of  man  to  God.  I 
concede  the  power  of  natural  religion.  Man  with  his  own 
unaided  power  can  discover  much — the  existence  of  God 
and  the  knowledge  of  his  attributes,  the  probability  of  an 
existence  after  death  and  a  general  judgment.  Orthodox 
believers  have  made  too  much  of  the  supernatural  and 
not  enough  of  natural  religion.  The  reason  is  that  the 
deistical  school  of  the  seventeenth  and  eighteenth  cen- 
turies— from  Lord  Herbert  to  Thomas-  Paine — have  as- 
sailed revealed  religion,  till  Christians  have  laid  aside 
their  works  with  the  denying  inquiry  of  Nathaniel :  "Can 
any  good  come  out  of  Nazareth?"  Like  Philip,  I  will 
answer:  "Come  and  see." 

Remember,  God  never  did  for  man  what  man  could  do 
for  himself.  God  did  not  make  the  mariner's  compass. 
He  never  made  a  printing  press,  a  submarine  cable,  an 
electric  telegraph,  a  balloon  or  a  cotton-gin.  He  never 
furnished  man  with  a  life-expectancy  table  or  a  table  of 

*The  Sun,  Young.  Lord  Kelvin  has  proved  that,  had  the  sun 
been  made  of  anthracite  coal,  it  would  have  burned  out  in  less  than 
5,000  years.  Its  density  is  about  25  per  cent,  greater  than  water. 
Helmholtz's  theory  of  solar  contraction  can  not  be  proved,  either 
true  or  false,  for  many  centuries  to  come. — W.  F.  B. 
2 


l8  HISTORICAL  MAN  OF  NAZARETH 

logarithms.  God  never  taught  man  hygiene  or  chemistry, 
never  solved  for  him  the  pons  asinorum;  never  discov- 
ered, for  man,  the  binomial  theory  or  the  continent  of 
America.  He  has  given  man  his  physical  and  mental 
powers  and  the  hidden  forces  of  nature.  Religion  is  any 
system  of  theology  or  philosophy  dealing  with  the  prob- 
lem of  life  and  death.  The  question  is:  How  far  could 
man's  unaided  intellect  reach  in  the  solution  of  this  great 
science?  The  following  discourse  was  delivered  by  a 
learned  Chinaman  to  a  missionary: 

"What  are  you  here  for?  To  teach  me  about  God?  My  an- 
cestors, who  were  contemporary  with  your  spiritual  father  Abra- 
ham, believed  in  the  same  God  in  which  he  believed;  and  I 
believe  in  the  same  God  in  which  they  believed.  But  I  have  never 
seen  anything  which  convinced  me  that  He  ever  revealed  Himself 
to  man  in  anything  but  reason  and  nature.  If  he  has  ever  made 
any  other  revelation,  I  should  be  most  happy  to  receive  it.  Now, 
if  He  has  made  any  other,  it  must  be  a  better  and  more  certain 
revelation,  or  God  did  a  vain  and  foolish  thing,  which  I  don't 
believe  He  would  do.  If  He  ever  revealed  Himself  through  this 
Jesus  of  Nazareth,  as  you  say  He  did,  that  revelation  should  have 
been  better  and  more  certain  than  reason  and  nature.  If  so,  why 
don't  you  fellows  agree  about  it?  One  of  you  tells  me  one  thing, 
another  tells  me  something  different.  Go  home,  agree  among 
yourselves,  come  back,  and  I  will  talk  with  you." 

I  do  not  know  what,  if  anything,  the  missionary  said 
in  reply.  -  What  he  could  have  said  puzzles  me.  It  is  the 
sad  spectacle  of  a  divided  Christendom.  United  Chris- 
tianity might  have  redeemed  the  world.  We  can  find 
much  in  the  writers  of  the  deistical  schools  to  prove  the 
necessity  of  a  supernatural  revelation.  Voltaire  and  Lord 
Herbert  confess  the  necessity.  The  strongest  argument 
in  favor  of  the  necessity  of  a  positive  revelation  is  found 
in  the  perusal  of  the  works  of  any  writer  on  natural  re- 
ligion, from  the  Memorabilia  to  such  philosophers  as 
Voltaire  and  Hume  and  such  theologians  as  Dick  and 


EPISTLE  DEDICATORY  IQ 

Paley.  The  authors  of  the  Bridgewater  Treatises1  are 
not  an  inch  in  advance  of  Sokrates.  This  idea  is  brought 
out  in  Macaulay's  review  of  Ranke's  History  of  the  Popes. 
Let  us  take  the  testimony  of  a  few  witnesses :  Sokrates 
and  Confucius,  both  of  them,  predicted  a  teacher  who 
would  teach  the  ultimate  truth.  And  now  comes  Edward 
Lord  Herbert  of  Cherbury.  I  quote  from  his  autobiog- 
raphy, at  pages  176  and  177: 

"I  did  consider  whether  it  was  not  better  for  a  while  to  sup- 
press it.  Being  thus  doubtful,  in  my  chamber,  one  fair  day  in  the 
summer,  my  casement  being  opened  towards  the  south,  the  sun 
shining  clear,  and  no  wind  stirring,  I  took  my  book,  De  Veritate, 
in  my  hand,  and  kneeling  on  my  knees,  devoutly  said  these  words : 

"  'O  Thou  eternal  God,  Author  of  the  light  which  now  shines 
upon  me,  and  Giver  of  all  inward  illuminations,  I  do  beseech 
Thee,  of  Thy  great  goodness,  to  pardon  a  greater  request  than  a 
sinner  ought  to  make;  I  am  not  satisfied  enough,  whether  I  shall 
publish  this  book,  De  Veritate;  if  it  be  for  Thy  glory,  I  beseech 
Thee  give  me  some  sign  from  heaven;  if  not,  I  shall  suppress  it.' 

"I  had  no  sooner  spoken  these  words,  but  a  loud  though  yet 
gentle  voice  came  from  the  heavens  (for  it  was  like  nothing  on 
earth),  which  did  scr  comfort  and  cheer  me,  that  I  took  my 
petition  as  granted,  and  that  I  had  the  sign  I  demanded,  where- 
upon also  I  resolved  to  print  my  book.  This,  how  strange  soever 
it  may  seem,  I  protest  before  the  eternal  God  is  true ;  neither  am 
I  in  any  way  superstitiously  deceived  herein,  since  I  did  not  only 
clearly  hear  the  noise,  but  in  the  serenest  sky  that  I  ever  saw, 
being  without  any  cloud,  did  to  my  thinking  see  the  place  whence 
it  came." 

Here  we  have  the  father  of  modern  deism  testifying 
to  a  direct,  immediate  and  supernatural  revelation  from 
Heaven. 

David  Hume,  the  Scotch  philosopher  of  the  eighteenth 
century,  has  given  theologians  much  trouble,  because,  in 
his  Essay  on  Miracles,  he  argues  upon  principles  now 

1  See  note  at  the  end  of  this  letter.— W.  F.  D. 


2O  HISTORICAL  MAN  OF  NAZARETH 

reduced  to  a  science — the  science  of  probabilities.  It  is 
what  every  man  acts  upon  in  the  ordinary  affairs  of  life, 
the  banker  with  his  average  of  monthly  deposits,  the 
underwriter  with  his  mortuary  table,  et  cetera.  In  his 
Natural  History  of  Religion,  Mr.  Hume  argues  that  poly- 
theism was  the  primary  religion  of  men,  and  that  mono- 
theism— or  theism,  as  he  styles  it — was  the  result  of  en- 
lightened reason;  that  it  sprang  from,  or  grew  out  of, 
polytheism  by  what  Mr.  Hume  would  probably  have 
called  evolution  had  he  lived  a  century  later.  In  my 
opinion,  the  eminent  Scotchman  furnishes  us  with  an 
excellent  argument  for  a  primitive  supernatural  revela- 
tion. When  he  argues  that  man's  unaided  intellect  grasps 
at  polytheism,  he  shows  the  necessity  for  a  revelation. 
Would  a  just  God  have  withheld  it? 

I  shall  ask  you  to  consider  together  three  works  of 
Voltaire,1  for,  in  my  notion,  they  are  an  entirety.  These 
are  Zadig,  The  Earthquake  at  Lisbon  and  Candide  ou 
I'Optimiste.  To  those  content  with  the  opinion  of  re- 
viewers, Zadig  teaches  blind  fatalism,  the  poem  on  the 
earthquake  teaches  pessimism,  and  Candide  ou  I'Optimiste 
philosophical  indifference  to  suffering.  I  read  for  myself 
and  not  for  reviewers.  In  my  judgment,  Zadig,  which 
was  written  eight  or  nine  years  before  the  others,  ought 
to  be  read  last,  for  it  is,  in  a  sense,  an  explanation  of  the 
others.  These  works  will  be  considered  in  the  following 
order : 

1.  Le  Tremblement  de  terre  dc  Lisbonne. 

2.  Candide  ou  I'Optimiste. 

3.  Zadig. 

To  understand  any  book  we  must  thoroughly  know  the 
circumstances  under  which  it  was  written.  On  All  Saints' 

'See  note  at  end  of  this  letter.— W.  F.  B. 


EPISTLE  DEDICATORY  21 

Day,  1755,  while  the  people  of  Lisbon  were  attending 
mass  in  their  churches,  the  sound  of  thunder,  which  ap- 
peared to  come  from  the  bowels  of  the  earth,  drowned 
the  peal  of  organs  and  the  voices  of  choirs.  The  panic- 
stricken  multitudes  were  frozen  with  terror.  Immedi- 
ately the  ground  began  to  heave  and  swell.  The  tall  piles 
swayed  to  and  fro,  like  supple  willows  before  the  breeze. 
Those  within  the  churches  attempted  to  rush  out,  but 
were  met  by  others  rushing  in,  as  to  a  place  of  safety. 
Stayed  in  their  flight,  all  were  buried  beneath  falling  arches 
and  crumbling  walls.  A  multitude  rushed  to  the  harbor 
and  were  met  by  a  huge  tidal  wave  bearing  ships  upon  its 
crest.  An  enormous  crowd  took  refuge  upon  a  vast  marble 
quay,  which  resisted  the  sea  wave  only  to  sink  into  the 
ocean  with  the  whole  of  its  living  burthen.  In  two  hours 
a  destructive  fire,  stimulated  by  a  raging  wind,  completed 
the  destruction,  and  the  city  was  a  total  wreck.  The 
cathedral,  eighteen  churches,  the  convent,  the  hall  of  the 
inquisition,  the  royal  palace,  the  palaces  of  the  nobility 
and  the  mansions  of  the  wealthy,  the  custom  house,  public 
granaries  and  warehouses  filled  with  merchandise,  yards 
filled  with  timber,  were  overthrown  by  the  shock  or  de- 
voured by  the  flame;  and  60,000  people  perished.  The 
shock  was  felt  as  far  east  as  Toplitz,  as  far  south  as  Sa- 
hara, as  far  west  as  Barbadoes  and  Lake  Ontario  and  as 
far  north  as  Sweden  and  Loch  Lomond  and  Loch  Ness  in 
Scotland.  Humboldt  estimated  that  the  extent  of  the 
earth's  surface  disturbed  was  four  times  that  of  all 
Europe. 

From  time  out  of  memory  men  have  tried  to  solve  the 
problem  of  the  origin  of  evil.  Zoroaster  and  Manichaeus 
confessing  one  God,  the  author  of  all  good,  at  the  same 
time  acknowledge  an  evil  principle,  the  origin  of  all  evil. 
This  theory,  the  latter  and  his  follower,  Faustus,  tried  to 


22  HISTORICAL  MAN  OF  NAZARETH 

reconcile  with  the  Christian  idea  of  God  and  Satan. 
Pessimists,  like  Schopenhauer,  have  maintained  that  evil 
was  universal,  while  optimists,  as  Bolingbroke  and  Pope, 
have  contended  for  the  dictum,  "whatever  is  is  right." 
This  would  do  away  with  the  origin  of  evil,  since  that 
can  have  no  origin  which  has  no  existence.  Voltaire  was 
deeply  moved  by  the  account  of  the  destruction  of  Lis- 
bon, and  ;wrote  this  poem,  which  contains  more  philosophy 
than  any  poem  which  I  have  read,  except  Milton's  Para- 
dise Lost,  and  closes  with  a  prayer,  the  most  beautiful  in 
any  language — excepting  the  Lord's  prayer  and  the 
prayer  of  Agur.  The  poet  pursues  his  argument  thus : 

"Can  we  concieve  a  God  beneficent, 
Upon  His  children's  happiness  intent, 
Yet  on  them  sorrows  sparing  not  to  heap? 
What  eye  can  penetrate  designs  so  deep? 
Through  the  All-Perfect  how  can  ill  befall? 
Yet  how  have  other  source,  since  he  rules  all? 
Still  evil's  everywhere,  confusion  dense; 
Sad  puzzle,  far  too  hard  for  human  sense. 
A  God  came  down  to  shed  some  balm  around, 
Surveyed  the  earth,  and  left  it  as  He  found. 
His  power  to  mend  the  sophist  loud  denies ; 
He  wanted  but  the  will,  another  cries ; 
And  while  the  disputants  their  views  proclaim, 
Lisbon  is  perishing  in  gulfs  of  flame, 
And  thirty  towns  with  ashes  strew  the  lea 
From  Tagus'  ravaged  borders  to  the  sea. 
Does  God  in  anger  scourge  a  guilty  race? 
Or  does  the  Lord  of  Being  and  of  Space, 
Unswayed  by  pity's  touch  or  anger's  force, 
Of  His  fixed  will  just  watch  the  changeless  course? 
Does  formless  matter  rebel  to  its  Lord, 
Bear  in  itself  the  seeds  of  disaccord? 


Nature  is  mute,  we  question  her  in  vain, 
And  feel  that  God  alone  can  make  all  plain. 


KPISTLE  DEDICATORY  23 

Humble  in  plaint,  and  patient  to  endure, 
I  doubt  not  Providence,  because  obscure." 

Here,  in  the  last  four  lines,  is  a  confession  of  the  neces- 
sity of  a  positive  revelation.  The  poem  abounds  with  ex- 
pressions of  the  most  profound  reverence  for  the  Deity. 
It  simply  presents  the  enigma  of  the  existence  of  non- 
punitive  suffering  as  a  problem  past  man's  solution.  The 
Anglican  bishop  of  Landaff  says  as  much  in  his  Apology 
for  the  Bible. 

John  James  Rousseau,1  the  Genevese  philosopher,  thus 
writes  in  his  Confessions: 

"I  received  a  copy  of  the  Destruction  of  Lisbon,  which  I  sup- 
posed was  sent  me  by  the  author.  This  made  it  necessary  for  me 
to  write  to  him  and  speak  of  the  poem.  This  I  did  in  a  letter  that 
was  printed  long  afterwards  without  my  consent,  as  will  appear 
hereafter.  Struck  at  seeing  this  poor  man,  overwhelmed,  so  to 
speak,  with  prosperity  and  glory,  eternally  declaiming  most  bit- 
terly against  the  miseries  of  life,  and  constantly  looking  at  every- 
thing with  a  jaundiced  eye,  I  got  into  my  head  the  insane  idea 
of  inducing  him  to  enter  within  himself,  and  proving  to  him  that 
everything  was  good.  Voltaire,  while  constantly  pretending  to 
believe  in  God,  never  really  believed  in  anything  but  the  Devil ; 
for  his  pretended  God  is  nothing  but  a  malevolent  being  who, 
according  to  him,  delights  in  nothing  but  evil-doing.  The  glaring 
absurdity  of  his  doctrine  is  especially  revolting  in  a  man  loaded 
with  every  sort  of  blessing,  who,  while  reveling  in  happiness, 
endeavored  to  strike  his  fellows  with  despair  by  the  frightful 
image  of  universal  calamity,  calamity  from  which  he  is  himself 
wholly  exempt.  I,  that  had  a  better  right  than  he  to  calculate  and 
weigh  the  evils  of  human  life,  made  an  impartial  examination 
thereof,  and  proved  to  him  that  there  was  not  one  of  them  all 
from  which  Providence  was  not  cleared,  not  a  single  one  that  had 
not  its  origin  in  the  abuse  man  had  made  of  his  faculties,  rather 
than  in  nature.  I  treated  him,  in  a  letter,  with  the  utmost  regard, 
consideration  and  delicacy,  with  all  possible  respect,  I  can  truly 
say.  However,  knowing  the  extreme  irritability  of  his  self-love, 

lSee  note  at  end  of  this  letter.— W.  F.  B. 


24  HISTORICAL  MAN  OF  NAZARETH 

I  did  not  send  this  letter  to  himself,  but  to  Dr.  Tronchin,  his 
friend  and  physician,  with  full  power  either  to  give  or  suppress 
it,  according  as  he  might  think  proper.  Tronchin  gave  the  letter. 
Voltaire  sent  me  a  few  words  in  reply,  stating  that,  being  sick 
himself,  and  having  charge  of  a  sick  person,  he  would  put  off  his 
answer  until  some  future  day,  and  said  not  a  word  upon  the 
subject  .  .  .  Subsequently  Voltaire  published  the  reply  he 
promised,  but  never  sent  me.  This  was  none  other  than  the  novel 
of  Candide,  of  which  I  can  not  speak,  as  I  never  read  it"1 

I  have  allowed  Rousseau  to  tell  his  own  story.  He  was 
an  eloquent  writer,  but  a  poor  critic.  How  the  abuse  that 
man  had  made  of  his  faculties  could  account  for  the  de- 
struction of  Lisbon  is  past  my  weak  comprehension. 

Voltaire's  Candide  on  I'Optimiste  has  been  described  as 
a  book  written  to  ridicule  divine.  Providence.  No  state- 
ment could  be  further  from  verity.  It  is  sometimes  placed 
in  contrast  with  Johnson's  Rasselas — published  afterward 
— to  the  disparagement  of  the  former.  The  terrible  earth- 
quake at  Lisbon  had  shaken,  not  only  the  earth,  but  the 
faith  of  its  inhabitants  in  the  theory  of  the  optimists.  Vol- 
taire's poem  was  opportune.  Had  Rousseau  read  Candide 
ou  I'Optimiste,  he  must  have  been  slow  of  comprehension 
had  he  not  seen  himself  portrayed  in  Pangloss,  the  pe- 
dantic and  loquacious  pedagogue.  Candide  on  I'Optimiste, 
like  Byron's  English  Bards  and  Scotch  Reiriewers,  was 
called  out  by  adverse  criticism.  It  is  a  sprightly  philo- 
sophical banter  written  to  ridicule  Rousseau's  optimism. 
In  my  judgment,  it  is  the  greatest  of  Voltaire's  writings. 
This  pastmaster  of  ridicule  shot  Parthian  arrows,  taken 
from  the  armory  of  his  inexhaustible  wit.  Rousseau  says 
that  he  did  not  read  the  book.  The  ostrich  hides  her  head 
in  the  sand,  but  does  not  escape  the  hunter.  Candide  is 
a  low  German  who  travels  over  the  earth  from  West- 

1  Rousseau,  Confessions,  book  IX. 


EPISTLE  DEDICATORY  2$ 

phalia,  his  native  land,  to  Bulgaria,  back  to  Holland, 
thence  to  Portugal,  then  through  Spain  to  Buenos  Ayres, 
from  Paraguay  through  the  Amazonian  forests  and  the 
imaginary  Eldorado  to  Surinam,  where  he  takes  ship  to 
France.  In  a  voyage  from  France  to  Venice,  he  touches 
England  at  Portsmouth,  and  witnesses  the  execution  of 
Admiral  John  Byng.  He  does  not  land.  If  we  fit  ro- 
mance to  dates,  Candide  would  have  spent  about  a  year 
in  South  America ;  for  he  witnessed  the  earthquake  at 
Lisbon,  November  i,  1755,  and  Admiral  Byng  was  shot 
March  14,  1757.  At  Venice,  Candide  meets  by  accident 
with  several  dethroned  monarchs,  who  had  come  to  spend 
the  carnival  there.  The  anacronisms  of  introducing  The- 
odore of  Corsica1  several  months  after  his  death  and  of 
making  the  carnival  occur  during  or  after  Lent  are  un- 
important, except  to  captious  critics.  Vergil  did  worse 
with  Aeneas  and  Dido.  Voltaire  makes  his  hero,  by  turns, 
a  vagabond,  a  soldier;  a  nabob,  a  slave,  a  lacky  and  a 
friar,  and  in  one  of  these  guises  exhibits  him  in  Constan- 
tinople, Ispahan,  Lapland,  Norway  and  Denmark.  Can- 
dide is  the  victim  of  a  baron  insane  with  family  pride,  of 
military  subalterns,  religious  bigots,  inquisitors,  a  tyran- 
nical colonial  governor,  sharpers,  thieves,  robbers,  harlots 
and  a  moral  monster.  He  witnesses,  meets  with  and 
hears  related  all  kinds  of  misfortunes,  battles,  bloodsheds, 
shipwrecks,  earthquakes,  auto  da  fes,  et  cetera.  The 
most  dreadful  disasters  are  heaped  upon  his  devoted  head. 
This  book,  like  Humphrey  Clinker  and  Gulliver,  is  writ- 
ten in  the  taste  of  the  age.  It  ridicules  optimism,  but 
does  not  teach  pessimism.  Don  Quixote,  Candide  ou 
I'Optimiste  and  the  Travels  of  Lemuel  Gulliver  are,  in  my 
opinion,  the  three  great  satires  since  Lucian  wrote  his 

'See  note  at  end  of  this  letter.— W.  F.  B. 


26  HISTORICAL  MAN  OF  NAZARETH 

Olympian  Dialogues.  Candide  ou  I'Optimiste  is  a  kind  of 
cross  betwixt  Don  Quixote  and  Kingley's  Westward  Ho, 
as  inferior  to  the  one  as  it  is  superior  to  the  other.  Pan- 
gloss,  a  companion  of  Candide,  is  in  turn  hanged,  burned 
and  drowned,  but  possesses  as  many  lives  as  a  cat.  He 
is  a  kind  of  philosophical  Don  Quixote,  but  fails  to  elicit 
the  admiration  due  to  La  Mancha's  doughty  Knight  of 
the  Sorrowful  Countenance.  Candide  might  almost  be 
considered  his  Sancho  Panza,  but  they  are  totally  different 
characters.  Cunegonde,  the  sweetheart  and  afterwards 
the  wife  of  Candide,  Cacambo,  his  valet,  Zenoida,  Can- 
dide's  second  wife,  Pococurante,  a  cynical  Venetian, 
James  the  Anabaptist,  Martin,  a  Manichean,  and  the  Old 
Woman — who  passed  through  every  phase  of  existence 
from  a  pampered  beauty  to  a  kitchen  scullion — are  other 
characters.  When  I  first  read  Candide  ou  I'Optimiste,  I 
was  nineteen  years  old.  When  I  next  read  it,  I  was  past 
forty.  It  did  not  seem  like  the  same  book.  With  the  ex- 
ception of  two  things  which  will  be  noted  hereafter,  there 
is  nothing  worse  in  it  than  will  be  found  in  Shakspere, 
Smollett  and  Swift.  The  difference  between  Candide  ou 
I'Optimiste  and  the  poem  on  the  destruction  of  Lisbon,  is 
the  difference  between  a  didactic  poem  and  a  prose  satire. 
The  same  general  sentiment  appears  in  each — pure  ag- 
nosticism as  to  the  ways  of  God  to  man.  If  agnosticism 
went  no  further,  I  would  have  little  criticism  to  pass.  I 
am  neither  Manichaean,  optimist  nor  pessimist.  It  oc- 
curred to  me  several  years  ago  that  the  Almighty  could 
run  the  universe  without  my  aid  or  assistance,  and  I  have 
not  been  offering  Him  help  or  proffering  Him  suggestions. 
Zadig.  like  Candide  ou  I'Optimiste,  is  a  philosophica' 
romance.  Zadig  was  a  young  Babylonian,  a  kind  of  a 
Solomon  in  his  wisdom.  The  story  of  his  life,  as  written 
bv  Voltaire,  reads  like  an  eastern  tale.  At  times  one  al- 


EPISTLE  DEDICATORY  2/ 

most  thinks  he  is  reading  in  the  Arabian  Nights  Enter- 
tainment. It  is  a  genius  who  can  adopt  the  style  of  an- 
other to  the  baffling  of  detection,  like  the  writer  who  a 
few  years  ago  produced  the  Letters  of  a  Chinese  Official. 
Voltaire  evidently  had  himself  in  mind  when  he  wrote 
this  tale.  A  significant  anagram  corresponds  to  the  name 
of  one  of  his  enemies.  There  are  characters  and  circum- 
stances all  through  the  story  corresponding  closely  to  per- 
sons and  things  which  had  affected  him  or  come  under 
his  observation.  Zadig  was  engaged  to  be  married  to  a 
young  lady  by  the  name  of  Semira.  One  day,  as  they 
walked  upon  the  banks  of  the  Euphrates,  they  were  as- 
sailed by  the  minions  of  a  dissolute  rival  of  Zadig,  named 
Orcan.  Zadig  rescued  his  mistress,  but,  in  so  doing,  re- 
ceived a  wound  near  the  left  eye.  An  imported  Egyptian 
physician  said  that  he  must  lose  the  eye.  Semira  heard 
of  it,  and  having  an  unconquerable  aversion  to  one-eyed 
men,  married  Orcan,  her  would-be  ravisher.  Semira  was 
an  educated  lady  of  the  court.  Zadig  now  wooed  and 
won  Azora,  a  woman  of  the  common  people,  but  she 
proved  false.  In  the  third  chapter  of  this  tale,  Zadig 
meets  with  an  adventure  very  similar  to  the  story  of  the 
Stray  Camel  which  John  G.  Saxe  has  reduced  to  verse. 
You  will  find  it  in  a  copy  of  his  poems  in  my  library  on 
page  1 60.  Zadig  is  beset  by  an  envious  man,  the  very 
facsimile  of  the  Abbe  Desfontaines  who  is  remembered 
only  because  he  maligned  Voltaire.  Like  Daniel,  Zadig 
is  exalted  to  be  prime  minister  of  Babylon.  But  the  king's 
jealousy  nearly  cost  Zadig  his  life.  He  fled  into  Egypt. 
The  first  person  he  meets  in  that  country  is  a  woman 
who  is  being  assaulted  by  a  man.  Zadig  draws  his  sword 
in  her  defense,  and  in  the  encounter  the  man  is  slain. 
Then  the  woman  upbraids  Zadig  for  slaying  her  lover, 
and  the  people  of  Egypt  sell  him  into  slavery.  Zadig 


28  HISTORICAL  MAN  OF  NAZARETH 

becomes  the  property  of  an  Arabian,  named  Setoc,  who 
takes  him  to  his  own  country.  Zadig  won  the  good-will 
of  his  master,  who,  by  a  philosophical  object  lesson,  he 
converts  from  Sabianism  to  deism;1  and  by  his  influence 
sutteeism  is  abolished.  For  this  (but  nominally  for  de- 
nying that  the  stars  set  in  the  sea)  he  is  condemned  to  be 
burned  by  a  slow  fire.  A  rescued  widow  by  the  name  of 
Almona  procured  his  pardon.  He  is  sent  by  his  master 
to  the  court  of  a  foreign  prince,  where,  by  an  ingenious 
stratagem  worthy  of  Solomon  or  Sancho  Panza,  he  dis- 
covers an  honest  man  to  fill  the  office  of  royal  treasurer. 
Returning  to  Babylon,  he  falls  in  with  the  leader  of  ban- 
ditti and  finds  the  royal  consort  of  Babylon,  Astarte, 
reduced  to  slavery.  He  turns  to  Babylon.  The  govern- 
ment is  overthrown,  and  the  king  is  dead.  The  succes- 
sion is  to  be  determined  by  a  combat  between  knights. 
The  victor  is  to  marry  the  queen  and  take  the  crown. 
Their  faces  are  covered,  so  that  the  knights  are  only 
known  by  the  color  of  their  armor.  Zadig  is  victorious, 
but  a  vanquished  knight  steals  his  armor  while  he  sleeps, 
and  the  thief  is  adjudged  the  victor.  Zadig  leaves  Baby- 
lon in  despair.  And  now  comes  what  a  certain  critic 
thinks  adds  nothing  to  the  story,  but  I  think  is  the  best 
part  of  it.  Fortunate  is  the  writer  who  escapes  the  charge 
of  plagiarism.  Did  I  say  fortunate?  Perhaps  another 
word  would  better  express  it.  For  plagiarism  is  a  quasi- 
confession  of  merit.  This  is  the  only  instance,  within  my 
knowledge,  where  Voltaire  has  been  accused  of  literary 
larceny.  What  is  plagiarism?  Read  in  English  Bards 
and  Scotch  Reviewers  the  simile  which  Byron  applies  to 
Kirke  White,  "So  the  struck  eagle"  et  quod  sequiter. 
Byron  took  this  from  Aeschylus  who  lived  twenty-four 

'See  note  at  end  of  this  letter.— W.  F.  B. 


EPISTLE  DEDICATORY  2O, 

centuries  before  him.  Aeschylus  took  it  from  Aesop 
who  lived  a  century  earlier.  Where  did  Aesop  get  it? 
From  some  ballad-singer  ?  orator  ?  hunter  ?  or  shepherd  ?  — 
who  lived  where  ?  and  when  ?  It  is  another  argument  for 
the  economic  basis  of  society  that  the  charge  of  plagiar- 
ism was  unknown  before  the  invention  of  literary  prop- 
erty. Thomas  Parnell,  an  Irish  contemporary  of  Vol- 
taire, tells  a  story  similar  to  the  one  I  am  about  to  relate, 
in  his  poem  The  Hermit.  Where  did  Parnell  get  it? 
Pope  says  from  Spain;  Goldsmith  thinks  from  Arabia; 
others  say  Persia  or  Hindustan.1  But  let  us  go  back  to 
Zadig.  He  meets  a  hermit  with  a  book  in  his  hand,  which 
he  calls  the  book  of  destinies.  He  takes  Zadig  into  his 
company  and  binds  him  by  an  oath  not  to  leave  him  for 
several  days.  The  hermit  robs  a  hospitable  entertainer 
of  a  golden  basin,  with  which  he  rewards  a  miser  for  a 
niggardly  entertainment.  They  are  at  the  house  of  a 
philosopher,  where  the  hermit  rewards  hospitality  by  set- 
ting fire  to  the  house.  Arrived  at  the  house  of  a  widow, 
they  are  treated  as  well  as  her  means  will  allow.  She 
sends  her  little  nephew  to  guide  them  on  their  way.  The 
hermit  seizes  the  boy  by  the  hair,  throws  him  into  a  river 
and  drowns  him.  Zadig  upbraids  the  slayer,  when  an 
angel  is  revealed  in  the  person  of  the  hermit.  The  basin 
was  stolen  to  teach  the  vain  and  ostentatious  owner  wis- 
dom. The  miser  was  rewarded  to  teach  him  hospitality. 
The  philosopher's  house  was  burned  that  he  might  dis- 
cover an  immense  treasure  beneath  the  ruins.  The  boy 
was  slain  to  prevent  his  killing  his  aunt  in  one  year  and 
Zadig  in  two.  He  was  not  reformed,  because  in  that 
event  he  would  have  killed  himself.  The  moral  of  the 
tale  is  :  Men  judge  of  all  without  knowing  anything. 


Poe's  William  Wilson,  Stevenson's  Jekyll  and  Hyde  and 
Ignatius  Donnelly's  Doctor  Huget  for  ''unconscious  absorption."  — 
W.  F.  B. 


30  HISTORICAL  MAN  OF  NAZARETH 

One  might  appropriately  close  this  triology  of  Voltaire 
with  the  Moslem's  submission:  "God  is  great." 

I  am  about  to  compare  this  triology  with  the  most  sub- 
lime poem  ever  produced  in  any  language  and  shall  show 
the  superiority  of  supernatural  to  natural  religion.    Much 
scholarship  and  much  ink  has  been  wasted  to  determine 
whether  this  poem  was  didactic,  dramatic  or  epic.    Leave 
this  to  the  folk  who  would  classify  genius,  as  a  botanist 
classifies  plants  and  an  ornithologist  classifies  quails  and 
partridges.    The  book  of  Job  is  either  didactic,  dramatic 
or  epic,  in  an  objective  sense,  according  to  the  mind  of 
the  person  who  reads  it.     Job  is  an  Arabian  sheik  who 
served  God  according  to  the  natural  law.     The  age  in 
which  the  hero  lived,  or  whether  he  ever  lived,  is  foreign 
to  my  purpose.     The  moral  is  the  same,  man  or  myth.1 
Job  had  been  prospered    beyond  all  men  of  the  East. 
There  came  a  time  when  the  sons  of  God  came  to  pre- 
sent themselves  before  the  Lord,  and  Satan  came  to  pre- 
sent himself    before  the  Lord.     It  has  been    a  mooted 
question   with   exegetists   whether   this   Satan   was   the 
Prince  of  Darkness  who  came,  like  Menelaus,  without 
an  invitation,  or  a  sort  of  celestial  detective  sent  out  from 
the  heavenly  court,  as  the  postmaster-general  sends  out 
an  inspector.     This  question,  too,  is  foreign  to  my  pur- 
pose.    Another  question  which  has  bothered  exegetical 
scholars  is  whether  the  assemblage  to  which  Satan  came, 
invited  or  uninvited,  was  a  meeting  of  the  saints  on  earth 
or  the  saints  in  heaven.    The  size  of  the  crowd  is  the  only 

II  believe  Job  to  have  been  historic  for  a  similar  reason  given 
for  Jonah,  in  the  main  body  of  this  work.    I  refer,  of  course,  to 
the  texts,  Ezekiel,  xiv.,  14,  and  James,  v.,  11.    Whether  the  book 
is  historic  in  the  sense  that  BoswelFs  Johnson  is  historic,  or  in 
the  sense  that  Shakspere's  Henry  VIII.  or  Richard  III.  is  historic, 
is  for  the  litterati  to  determine.  The  question  of  verbal  inspiration 
is  left  with  the  theologians. — W ',  F.  B. 


EPISTLE  DEDICATORY  31 

question  involved  in  this  controversy.  The  Lord  in- 
quires of  the  Adversary  if  he  has  considered  his  servant, 
Job,  a  fervent  and  upright  man  who  serves  God  and  es- 
chews evil.  Satan  was,  evidently,  a  firm  believer  in  the 
economic  basis  of  society,  and  thought  that  Job  was 
swayed  by  his  material  interests  and  that  there  was  a 
consideration  for  his  service.  He  suggests  the  extinction 
of  all  Job's  worldly  possessions.  The  Most  High  permits 
this,  putting  an  interdict  upon  any  injury  to  his  person. 
Then  follows  a  severe  test  of  the  steadfast  patriarch. 
Not  only  is  his  property  stolen  or  destroyed,  but  his  chil- 
dren perish  in  a  hurricane.  The  only  thing  left  him  is  a 
shrewish  wife.  But  Job  reverently  bows  his  head  and 
says:  "The  Lord  gave,  the  Lord  taketh  away,  blessed 
be  the  name  of  the  Lord."  His  evil  genius  makes  his 
return  to  the  heavenly  court.  When  reminded  that  Job 
holds  fast  to  his  integrity,  the  Adversary  suggests  that 
self-preservation  is  the  strongest  instinct  of  man's  nature, 
and  that,  if  Job  is  smitten  in  his  body,  his  integrity  will 
yield.  License  is  given  the  Adversary  to  proceed  to  this 
extremity,  with  an  interdict  against  destroying  the  life 
of  the  patriarch.  Satan  smites  Job  with  some  loathsome 
disease  whose  nature  has  been  a  fruitful  source  of  specu- 
lation. Cast  out  as  unclean,  Job  sits  down  upon  the  gar- 
bage pile,  which  stood  outside  of  every  village,  before 
the  existence  of  modern  sanitary  regulation.  His  wife 
appeared  as  a  tempter,  advising  him  to  bless  (curse1) 
God  and  die.  But  Job  rebukes  her  and  holds  fast  to  his 
integrity.  Three  of  his  friends  appear  upon  the  scene 
and  are  stricken  dumb  at  beholding  his  calamity.  For 
seven  days  and  seven  nights  not  a  word  is  spoken,  when 
Job  breaks  the  silence  by  cursing  the  day  in  which  he 

'See  note  at  end  of  this  letter.— W.  F.  B, 


32  HISTORICAL  MAN  OF  NAZARETH 

was  born.  As  a  wail  of  sublime  despair,  nothing,  in  any 
language — save  Satan's  address  to  the  sun  in  Milton's 
Paradise  Lost — approaches  this  discourse  of  Job.  Then 
follows  a  series  of  discourses,  in  three  cycles  of  six 
speeches  each,  a  discourse  by  each  of  Job's  friends — 
doubtless  in  the  order  of  age — and  a  reply  to  each  of 
these  by  Job  himself.  These  discourses  are  without  par- 
allel in  the  history  of  didactics.1  One  who  has  been  pres- 
ent at  an  Indian  council  would  be  at  home  in  reading  this 
book.  Each  speaker  proceeds  without  interruption  and 
is  listened  to  with  respectful  silence.  The  burden  of  the 
discourse  of  Job's  friends  is  that  suffering  is  punitive, 
and  they  exhort  Job  to  repentance.  Job  argues  that  suf- 
fering is  not  necessarily  punitive,  and  in  the  twenty-first 
chapter  refers  to  the  prosperity  of  the  wicked  in  proof 
of  his  thesis.  The  chief  value  of  this  book  is  the  over- 
whelming argument  it  furnishes  for  a  final  judgment, 
which  must  be  a  verity  if  God  is  just.  In  the  thirty-first 
chapter,  Job  lifts  his  voice  to  heaven  in  an  awful  oath  of 
clearing,  acquitting  himself  of  a  long  list  of  enumerated 
offenses  covering  almost  every  conceivable  sin.  Job's 
friends  have  already  confessed  defeat  by  their  silence, 
and  now  comes  the  interposition  of  Elihu,  a  bystander, 
who  reproves  Job's  friends  for  their  silence  and  criticises 
Job  in  a  strain  which  does  not  differ  materially  from  the 
position  taken  by  his  friends.  Elihu2  appears  as  a  de- 
fender of  divine  justice,  and  is  angry  with  Job's  friends 
for  their  inability  to  answer  him.  The  true  moral  of  this 
wonderful  book  is  the  reply  of  the  Almighty  who  an- 
swered Job  out  of  the  whirlwind.  It  reminds  one  of  a 
scene  at  the  death-bed  of  Montesquieu : 

1When  you  are  older  read  the  Book  of  Job  with  Plato's  Dia- 
logue on  Justice. — W.  F.  B. 

2  It  is  claimed  that  this  discourse  of  Elihu  is  an  interpolation. 
The  discussion  of  this  question  is  foreign  to  my  purpose.-—  W.  F.  B. 


EPISTLE  DEDICATORY  33 

"Sir,"  said  the  clerk,  "you  know  how  great  God  is." 
"Yes,"  replied  the  philosopher,  "and  how  little  men  are." 

The  divine  interposition  denies  the  possibility  of  Job's 
reading  the  meaning  of  God's  visitation.  How  shall  those 
who  can  not  divine  the  constitution  or  course  of  nature, 
or  understand  and  explain  the  instincts  of  animals,  inter- 
pret the  ways  of  God  to  man  ?  The  interposition  begins : 

"Who  is  this  that  darkeneth  counsel 
By  words  without  knowledge?" 

God  does  not  condescend  to  notice  Job's  individual 
case.  "Who  am  I?"  and  "Who  art  thou?"  is  the  sub- 
stance. This  reply  is  divided  into  two  discourses ;  and, 
at  the  end  of  each,  Job  bows  his  head  with  the  Moslem's 
submission — the  very  words  of  which  appear  in  the  dis- 
course of  Elihu — God  is  great. 

Now  a  superficial  reader  might  insist  that  the  only 
difference  between  what  I  have  inaccurately  called  Vol- 
taire's triology  and  the  Book  of  Job  is  literary  merit. 
This  would  be  a  grave  error.  The  Wise  Man  tells  us 
that  dead  flies  cause  the  ointment  of  the  apothecary  to 
send  forth  a  stinking  savor.  I  once  read  with  your 
mother  the  Confessions  of  Rousseau  and  the  Confessions 
of  St.  Augustine.  When  they  were  finished  I  asked: 

"Where  is  the  difference?" 

I  shall  never  forget  the  answer : 

"All  the  difference  in  the  world;  the  difference  between  the 
confession  of  a  braggart  and  the  confession  of  a  penitent." 

That  you  may  see  how  unsatisfactory  natural  religion 
is,  both  in  ethics  and  in  hope,  let  us  compare  two  pas- 
sages from  Voltaire,  each  with  a  parallel  passage  from 
Job: 


34 


HISTORICAL  MAN  OF  NAZARETH 


In  his  oath  of  clearing, 
Job  says: 

"I  made  a  covenant  with 
mine  eyes ; 

Why,  then,  should  I  think 
upon  a  maid? 

If  mine  heart  has  been  de- 
ceived by  a  woman, 

Or  if  I  have  laid  wait  at 
my  neighbor's  door; 

Then  let  my  wife  grind 
unto  another, 

And  let  others  bow  down 
upon  her."1 

So  much  for  morality  consistent  with  Voltaire's  life 
at  Cirey  from  1734  to  1749.    But  let  us  read  again: 


Speaking  of  Candide's 
pre-nuptial  relations  with 
Zenoida,  Voltaire  says: 

"The  greater  part  blamed 
her,  and  her  conduct  was  only 
approved  by  some  few  who 
knew  how  to  reflect.  Zenoida, 
who  set  a  proper  value  on  the 
good  opinion,  even  of  fools, 
was,  nevertheless,  too  happy 
to  repent  the  loss." 


DESTRUCTION   OF  LISBON 

"Yet,  when  we  issue  from  this 
dreadful  gate, 

Who  may  presume  to  claim  a 
happier  fate? 

Tremble    we    must,    howe'er 
the  riddle's  read, 
knowing    nothing,    we 
have  all  to  dread." 


And, 


JOB    XIX 

"For  I  know  that  my  re- 
deemer liveth, 

And  that  he  shall  stand  at 
the  latter  day  upon  the  earth : 

And  though  after  my  skin 
worms  destroy  this  body, 

Yet  in  my  flesh  shall  I  see 
God:2 

Whom  I  shall  see  for  my- 
self, 

And  mine  eyes  shall  be- 
hold, and  not  another; 

Though  my  reins  be  con- 
sumed within  me." 

The  foregoing  passages  need  no  comment.  But  the 
greatest  lesson  to  be  learned  from  Job  is  the  necessity  of 

1  Every  boy  ought  to  commit  the  seventh  chapter  of  Proverbs  to 
memory. — W.  F.  B. 

"The  higher  critics  have  tried  a  revision  of  this  text.  But  the 
learned  Jew,  Rabbi  Shelomoh  Yitzhaki,  renders  it,  "In  my  flesh 
shall  I  see  the  judging  God."  A  Hebrew  for  Hebrew.— W.  F.  B. 


EPISTLE  DEDICATORY  35 

a  positive  revelation,  yet  man's  inability  to  understand  it 
all.  The  trusting  faith  that  a  little  child  puts  in  his 
parent — that  is  what  we  must  have,  and  it  is  worth  all 
the  philosophy  in  the  world.  Voltaire  wrote  in  his  La 
Loi  Naturelle: 

"O  God,  whom  men  ignore,  whom  everything  reveals, 
Hear  now  the  latest  words  of  him  who  now  appeals ; 
'Tis  searching  out  Thy  law  that  hath  bewildered  me ; 
My  heart  may  go  astray,  but  it  is  full  of  Thee." 

God's  answer  to  Job  would  have  been  a  sufficient  an- 
swer to  Voltaire. 

But  Voltaire  furnishes  the  strongest  argument  in  favor 
of  Christianity  by  what  he  is  unable  to  do  against  it. 
Lord  Lyttelton,  in  his  Dialogues  of  the  Dead,  makes  Lu- 
cian  say  to  Rabelais :  "Ridicule  is  the  terror  of  all  false 
religions."  Lucian  himself  laughed  the  gods  out  of 
Olympus.  No  person  who  has  read  Voltaire,  and  espe- 
cially his  romance,  The  White  Bull,  can  doubt  that  he 
took  his  cue  from  Lucian ;  else  it  was  a  strange  case  of 
mental  parallelism. 

I  could  not  recommend  Voltaire  to  you,  even  as  a 
teacher  of  natural  religion,  for  a  youthful  mind,  without 
philosophical  training,  is  too  apt  at  mistaking  ridicule 
for  argument,  and  in  the  impulse  of  adolescence  jumps 
to  a  conclusion.  A  sneer  will  go  further  than  an  argu- 
ment, and.  Voltaire  outranks  every  sneerer  that  ever  lived, 
except  Lucian.  Even  in  Candide  ou  I'Optimiste,  like  a 
Malay  running  amuck,  he  strikes  with  the  deadly  kris 
of  his  masterful  wit  at  every  believer,  except  James  the 
Anabaptist,  and  the  pure  theists  of  his  imaginary  Eldo- 
rado. In  his  Seer  and  Atheist,  he  writes  like  a  Quaker, 
and  this  is  what  he,  probably,  would  have  been  had  he 
been  born  in  England  instead  of  France.  O  my  son,  I 


36  HISTORICAL  MAN  OF  NAZARETH 

can  not  resist  referring  again  to  the  fact  that  Christian- 
ity has  been  invulnerable  to  his  raillery. 

"Cervantes  smiled  Spain's  chivalry  away." 

The  Gospel  was  more  than  the  adventures  of  Amadis 
de  Gaul. 

I  think  we  have  seen  the  necessity  for  a  positive  reve- 
lation. Now,  I  do  not  know  whether  Moses  wrote  the 
Pentateuch  or  not.  Richard  Simon,  the  father  of  mod- 
ern higher  criticism,  said  he  did  not.  Later  critics  say 
he  did.  Colenso,  an  Anglican  bishop  of  the  last  century, 
wrote  a  very  learned  and  elaborate  treatise — more  perni- 
cious than  anything  ever  penned  by  Voltaire — to  prove 
not  only  that  Moses  did  not  write  it,  but  that  it  was  not 
inspired.  Now,  my  boy,  there  is  a  distinction  between 
higher  criticism,  the  handmaid  of  faith,  and  destructive 
criticism,  the  assassin  of  faith.  Always  keep  this  dis- 
tinction in  mind.  It  is  not  important  who  the  particular 
author  of  any  book  in  the  Bible  was.  You  will  find  in 
the  reply  to  Thomas  Paine's  Age  of  Reason,  by  the  An- 
glican bishop  of  Landaff — Apology  for  the  Bible — a 
splendid  explanation  of  the  distinction  between  the  gen- 
uineness and  the  authenticity  of  a  book.  I  know  this: 
It  is  easier  for  me  to  believe  that  the  author  of  the  Pen- 
tateuch— or  rather  that  Moses  was  inspired  than  that  he 
was  not.  Donovan,  if  he  was  not  inspired,  every  codifier 
from  Drako  to  Blackstone  pales  in  the  blaze  of  his  genius 
lijce  a  firefly  in  the  path  of  a  marine  search-light.  Read 
the  twentieth  chapter  of  Exodus.  Where  did  Moses  get 
that  law?  You  will  read  in  the  body  of  this  work  what 
I  have  to  say  about  Ezra.  There  is  a  thing  to  which  I 
wish  to  call  particular  attention.  The  Jews  never  made 
use  of  judicial  torture,  and  they  were,  apparently,  the 
only  ancient  people  to  whom  this  abomination  was  un- 


EPISTLE  DEDICATORY  37 

known.  Their  punishments  were  severe,  it  is  true;  but, 
in  a  capital  trial  at  least,  a  man  had  to  be  convicted  upon 
the  testimony  of  two  witnesses.  Read  Deuteronomy, 
chapter  xix.,  verse  15,  and  then  read  article  III.,  section 
3,  clause  i,  of  the  Constitution  of  the  United  States. 
Remember  the  latter  was  written  in  A.D.  1787,  the  for- 
mer nearly  fifteen  centuries  before  Christ;  the  latter  by 
lawyers  with  centuries  of  civilisation  behind  them,  the 
former  by  an  ancient  Toussaint  1'Ouverture,  for  a  nation 
of  runaway  slaves.  Under  our  constitution,  a  man  can 
confess  in  open  court,  or  plead  guilty,  but  with  the  Jews 
he  could  not  plead  guilty,  or,  in  other  words,  testify 
against  himself.  This  is  something  that  is  familiar  to 
every  lawyer  who  has  studied  Hebrew  jurisprudence. 
The  superiority  of  any  nation  is  measured  by  their  judi- 
cial procedure.  Where  did  Moses  get  that  procedure? 
In  the  wilderness  of  stony  Arabia  thirty-four  centuries 
ago,  he  stood  several  centuries  in  advance  of  Lord  Bacon 
and  Sir  Edward  Coke,  both  of  whom  used  torture.  For 
these  men  borrowed  their  procedure  from  pagan  Rome. 
Where — where  did  Moses  get  his?  Moses  or  Ezra? 
I  care  not  who  it  was. 

Do  not  waste  your  time  in  bootless  speculation  upon 
matters  incidental  to  the  subject  of  revelation.  There 
are  a  score  or  more  of  Bible  questions  which  had  best  be 
left  alone.  For  example,  the  redemption  of  man  does 
not  depend  upon  the  flatness  or  rotundity  of  the  earth, 
or  whether  God  made  the  universe  in  six  days  or  in  six 
indefinite  periods  of  time,  or  whether  Eve  ate  an  apple, 
an  apricot  or  horse-chestnut,  or  whether  or  not  her  sin 
was  concupiscence,  or  whether  Noah's  flood  was  uni- 
versal or  local,  or  whether  or  not  the  difference  between 
Hebrew  and  Sanskrit  dated  from  the  Tower  of  Babel,  or 
whether  Abraham  was  75  or  135  years  old  when  he  mi- 


38  HISTORICAL  MAN  OF  NAZARETH 

grated  from  Charan.  The  so-called  opposition  of  science 
will  close  with  the  last  act  in  the  drama  of  human  his- 
tory; for  scientists  change  their  theories  as  a  chameleon 
changes  his  color,  or  a  snake  his  skin.  Theology  can  not 
chase  an  ignis  fatuus. 

1.  To  my  own  vision,  it  is  plain  that  the  Bible  pas- 
sively recognizes  the  Homeric  theory  of  a  flat  earth  and 
a  firmament  above,   which  might  be   represented  by   a 
saucer  covered  with  a  glass  bowl.     If  you  try  to  torture 
any  other  meaning  out  of  certain  texts  in  Genesis,  Joshua, 
Job  and  Ezekiel,  you  will  ignominously  fail  and  make 
yourself  a  fit  subject  for  merited  ridicule.1    But  the  Bible 
tacitly  recognizes  the  anthropomorphic  idea  of  God.     It 
was  the  only  idea  that  primitive  people  could  grasp.   You 
will  understand  this  by  a  careful  study  of  the  language 
of  any  primitive  people.     It  is  impossible  to  express  an 
abstract  idea  in  the  language  of  the  Santee  Sioux  In- 
dians, certainly  before  it  was  modified  by  white  scholars. 
You  talk  to  a  child  in  a  way  to  make  him  understand, 
and  you  must  employ  very  different  language  from  that 
used  with  an  adult. 

2.  It  is  enough  to  know  that  the  sin  of  our  first  parents 
was  the  sin  of  disobedience,  whatever  the  form  may  have 
been.     The  fall  of  man  sowed  the  germ  of  original  sin. 
Redemption  is  the  only  remedy.     The  transmission  of 
spiritual  defilement  from  parent  to  child  is  as  scientific 
as  Darwin's  law  of  heredity  and  as  just  as  the  physical 
transmission  of  disease,  of  which  we  see  daily  examples. 
In  fact,  heredity  is  the  carrying  of  the  doctrine  of  original 
sin  over  into  science,  as  the  modern  injunction  is  the 
carrying  of  the  Roman  interdict  over  into  equity. 

*The  true  explanation  is  that  the  language  of  these  texts  was 
literal  to  the  writers  and  figurative  to  the  Holy  Ghost.  Nothing 
far-fetched  in  this.— IV.  F.  B. 


EPISTLE  DEDICATORY  39 

3.  Your  brother  Eugene  once  asked  me  to  explain 
Noah's  flood.     I  told  of  thirteen  different  explanations, 
from  the  theory  of  a  celestial  ocean,  like  the  Saturnine 
rings,  to  a  depression  of  the  earth's  crust,  as  explained 
by  Hugh  Miller.    Then  I  gave  him  the  objections  to  each 
of  these.     He  looked  up  in  my  face  and  asked,  "Papa, 
what  do  you  believe?"    I  replied,  "I  have  no  opinion  and 
would  not  advise  you  to  waste  your  time  trying  to  form 
one." 

4.  I  used  to  ridicule  the  story  of  Babel  as  a  stupid  at- 
tempt to  account  for  something  which  bore  internal  evi- 
dence of  growth,  by  the  fable  of  a  gang  of  brickmasons 
going  to  sleep  and  waking  up  tongue-tied.    But  it  is  suf- 
ficient to  know  that,  after  the  flood,  men  sought  to  guard 
against  a  second  cataclysm  by  their  own  power,  and  that 
God  defeated  the  attempt. 

5.  The  Bible  says,  Genesis  xi.,  26,  that  Terah  lived 
seventy  years  and  .begat  Abram.     At  verse  32,  of  the 
same  chapter,  it  says  that  Terah  died  in  Charan  and  all 
his  days  were  205  years.     In  the  first  verse  of  the  next 
chapter  we  are  told  that  God  commanded  Abram  to  get 
out  of  the  country.    In  the  fourth  verse  of  the  same  chap- 
ter we  are  told  that  Abram  was  seventy-five  years  old 
when  he  departed.    By  the  first  verse  of  chapter  xvii.,  we 
learn  that,  after  his  departure  from  Charan,  his  visit  to 
Egypt,  his  war  with  the  kings,  his  visit  to  Melchisidek 
and  the  birth  of  Ishmael,  he  is  ninety-nine  years  old. 
Now,  if  Abram's  father  was  seventy  at  Abram's  birth 
and  205  at  his  own  death,  Abram  must  have  been  135 
at  his  departure  from  Charan.     Voltaire  calls  attention 
to  this  in  his  Philosophical  Dictionary  and  cites  Augus- 
tine of  Hippo  as  saying  that  the  discrepancy  is  inex- 
plicable.    So  Thomas  Paine  tries  to  make  much  out  of 
the  claim  that  Ezra  did  not  know  enough  to  add  a  column 


40  HISTORICAL  MAN  OF  NAZARETH 

of  figures.  My  son,  time  spent  on  such  trifles  is  time 
wasted.  The  Anglican  bishop  of  Landaff  gives  us  a 
possible  answer  to  Paine.  The  important  fact  in  regard 
to  Abraham  is  that  he  was  the  restorer  of  monotheism 
and  the  spiritual  father  of  three  great  religions.  There 
has  been  much  dispute  about  the  age  of  Columbus,  the 
discoverer  of  America,  and  it  has  been  placed  as  high 
as  seventy  and  as  low  as  fifty.  But  I  never  heard  of  any 
one  disputing-  the  discovery  on  that  ground.  Where  did 
Hannibal  cross  the  Alps?  I  do  not  know.  Some  one 
has  claimed  that  he  did  not  cross  them  at  all.  But  we 
feel  certain  that  he  carried  the  second  Punic  war  into 
Italy,  and  turned  that  war  from  a  struggle  of  the  Ro- 
mans for  territory  to  a  struggle  for  existence;  that  he 
fought  and  won  the  battles  of  Tribia,  Thrasymene  and 
Cannae,  besieged  Capua  and  blockaded  Rome;  that  for 
fifteen  years  he  made  farming  in  Italy  unprofitable  and 
well-nigh  impossible  ;  that  he  drove  the  rustics  into  the 
towns  and  kept  them  there,  thus  changing  the  whole 
character  of  the  Roman  people,1  who  afterwards  carried 
on  their  farms  by  slaves.  These  essential  facts  can  not 
be  affected  by  an  argument  for  or  against  the  Little  St. 
Bernard,  Mont  Genevre,2  Mont  Cenis,  Mont  Viso  or  a  sea 
voyage  from  Spain  to  Italy. 

For  my  own  part,  I  care  not  whether  the  story  of  the 
creation,  of  the  fall  of  man,  of  the  Noachian  deluge  or 


denies   this.     See  Seven   Roman   Statesmen,   Tiberius 
Gracchus—  W.  F.  B. 

ali  we  accept  the  account  of  Polybius,  it  would  seem  certain 
that  Hannibal  crossed  at  the  Little  St.  Bernard.  But  Polybius,  in 
his  third  book,  says  that,  when  Hannibal  had  arrived  at  the  sum- 
mit, he  pointed  out  the  valley  of  Po  to  his  soldiers  to  encourage 
and  stimulate  them.  Now,  the  valley  of  the  Po  can't  be  seen  from 
the  Little  St.  Bernard  or  any  other  pass  of  the  Alps.  Who  wishes 
to  throw  away  Polybius  on  that  account?  Yet  this  is  about  on  a 
par  with  any  criticism  of  Paine  or  Voltaire  upon  the  Bible.  — 
W.  F.  B. 


EPISTLE  DEDICATORY  41 

of  the  tower  of  Babel  are  literal,  allegorical  or  anthro- 
pomorphical. Let  speculative  theologians  dispute  about 
it.  It  is  not  my  field.  The  ethical  sense  is  the  same,  in 
any  event,  of  the  three.  As  a  matter  of  practical  ethics, 
the  Abrahamic  religions,  Judaism,  Christianity,  Moham- 
medanism (and  Parsiism  is  nearly  allied)1  are  superior 
to  any  system  of  ethics  ever  devised,  from  the  most  en- 
lightened paganism  to  modern  ethical  culture.  Ethics  is 
founded  either  in  dogma  or  sociology.  There  can  be  no 
half-way  about  it.  Roman  virtue  was  simply  conven- 
tional ;2  Jewish  virtue  was  founded  upon  the  law  of  God. 
Let  us  cite  instances. 

LUCRETIA 

Two  thousand  four  hundred  seventeen  years  ago,  when 
Tarquin  the  Proud,  the  seventh  king  of  Rome,  reigned,  a 
noble  Roman  lady,  named  Lucretia,  lived  with  her  hus- 
band at  Collatia,  a  few  miles  from  Rome.  Her  husband 
was  Collatinus,  whose  father  was  the  king's  first  cousin. 
Once  while  the  army  of  Tarquin  was  engaged  in  besieging 
the  city  of  Ardea,  Collatinus  was  feasting  with  the  king's 
sons.  They  were,  doubtless,  filled  with  wine,  or  they 
would  not  have  been  guilty  of  the  foolishness  which  I  am 
about  to  relate.  They  engaged  in  a  dispute  about  the 
beauty  and  virtue  of  their  respective  wives.  This  was 

'See  note  at  end  of  this  letter.— W.  F.  B. 

2  See  note  at  end  of  this  letter. 

Mores,  with  the  Romans,  signified  both  manners  and  morals. 
So  far  as  I  know,  the  celebrated  Count  Volney  was  the  first 
philosopher  of  modern  times  to  argue  that  morals  were  simply 
custom  which  was  regulated  by  the  age  and  the  environment.  One 
can  listen  to  this  with  measured  patience  from  the  lips  of  an 
avowed  infidel.  But  when  an  alleged  Christian  minister  steals 
Count  Volney's  thunder  and  delivers  it  from  the  pulpit — shade  of 
Jonathan  Edwards !  What  would  you  say  to  some  of  your  de- 
generates?— W.  F.  B. 


42  HISTORICAL  MAN  OF  NAZARETH 

finally  settled  by  a  night  journey  and  two  surprise  parties, 
one  at  Rome  and  the  other  at  Collatia.  They  found  the 
wives  of  the  King's  sons  entertaining  their  friends,  but 
Lucretia  was  spinning  in  the  midst  of  her  maids.  This 
settled  the  dispute.  But  at  this  visit  Sextus,  the  King's 
son,  conceived  an  unholy  desire  for  Lucretia.  After  a 
few  days  he  returned  to  Collatia  and  was  hospitably  enter- 
tained by  Lucretia,  as  the  kinsman  of  her  husband.  That 
night  Sextus  left  his  couch,  and,  approaching  that  of 
Lucretia,  laid  his  hand  upon  her  breast  and  said : 

"Be  silent,  Lucretia ;  I  am  Sextus  Tarquinius ;  my  sword 
is  in  my  hand.  You  shall  perish,  if  you  utter  a  word." 

The  wicked  man  gave  the  wretched  woman  the  terrible 
choice — to  submit  to  him  or  die  by  his  hand.  He  further 
told  her  that,  if  she  chose  death,  he  would  kill  one  of  her 
male  slaves  and  place  him  on  the  couch  with  her,  and 
would  swear  to  her  husband  that  he  slew  them  in  the  act 
of  adultery.  The  woman  yielded  to  his  wishes.  Having 
accomplished  his  fiendish  purpose,  Sextus  returned  to  the 
camp.  The  woman  sent  for  her  husband  and  her  father. 
With  them  came  Brutus  and  Valerius,  two  friends.  The 
woman  told  her  story  and  stabbed  herself.1  This  story 
has  been  branded  as  a  myth,  but,  be  it  fact  or  be  it  fiction, 
the  "Chaste  Lucretia"  was  the  Roman's  ideal  of  female 
virtue. 

Gains  Julius  Caesar  engaged  in  an  intrigue  which 
caused  Pompey  to  divorce  his  wife,  Mucia.  Pompey  took, 
in  place  of  Mucia,  Caesar's  only  daughter  Julia.  Even 
the  virtuous  Cato  divorced  his  wife  for  the  accommodation 
of  a  friend,  and  remarried,  her  after  the  friend's  death. 
The  offense  of  Clodius,  which  shocked  Rome,  was  the 
sacrilege,  not  the  adultery.  Cicero  divorced  his  wife, 

"See  note  at  end  of  this  letter.— W.  F.  B. 


EPISTLE  DEDICATORY  43 

and  no  satisfactory  reason  has  been  assigned  by  any  of 
his  biographers,  from  Plutarch  to  Forsyth.  It  may  not 
be  right  to  do  what  Daniel  Sickles  or  Daniel  McFarland 
did.  But  the  fact  that  for  more  than  two  hundred  years, 
neither  in  England  nor  in  America,  has  any  man  been 
executed  for  slaying  the  seducer  of  his  wife,  when  that, 
and  that  alone,  prompted  the  fatal  blow,  shows  a  horror  of 
the  crime,  thus  summarily  punished,  which  did  not  exist  in 
pagan  Rome.  Much  is  said  of  the  modern  divorce  court 
— much  of  the  one  couple  who  are  divorced — nothing  of 
the  seven  who  remain  true  to  death.  The  remedy  does 
not  lie  in  legislation.  Marriage  in  its  use  has  been  de- 
graded to  something  beneath  the  beasts  that  perish.  But, 
for  all  of  that,  Christianity,  in  its  war  with  man's  de- 
pravity, is  gaining  a  slow  but  certain  victory.  Christian 
Europe  and  America  are  immeasurably  better  than  pagan 
Rome.  Then  it  was  the  Ciceros  and  Catos  who  sought 
the  divorce.  Now  it  is  the  Carters  and  Castellanes. 

JOSEPH 

Let  us  contrast  the  history  just  related  with  another. 
You  remember  how  Joseph  was  hated  by  his  brethren, 
and  how  they  sold  him  to  a  band  of  Arabians,  who  in  turn 
sold  him  to  Potiphar,  the  captain  of  Pharaoh's  guard,  and 
how  Joseph  became  his  master's  steward  and  overseer. 
The  young  man  was  apt  in  business,  and  his  master's 
affairs  prospered  in  Joseph's  hands.  Both  on  this  ac- 
count, and  because  of  the  beauty  of  his  person,  his  mis- 
tress made  love  to  him.  Joseph  gently,  but  firmly,  rejected 
her  advances,  with  the  words,  "How  can  I  do  this  great 
wickedness  and  sin  against  God?;'  But  the  faithless 
spouse  of  Potiphar  was  persistent.  Pretending  to  be  sick 
at  the  time  of  a  great  religious  festival,  she  remained  at 
home.  Joseph  came  into  the  house  on  some  business 


44  HISTORICAL  MAN  OF  NAZARETH 

of  his  master,  when  the  woman  again  approached  him, 
threatening  that,  if  he  refused  her,  she  would  accuse  him 
to  her  husband  of  attempting  the  crime  he  had  refused 
to  commit.  Upon  his  final  refusal,  she  seized  him  in  the 
wildness  of  her  erotic  fury,  and  he  fled,  leaving  his  gar- 
ments in  her  grasp.  The  would-be  adulteress  was  as  good 
as  her  threat,  and  Joseph  was  placed  in  prison  with 
malefactors. 

Mark  the  contrast : 

Lucretia  refused  to  sin  till  threatened  with  death  and 
disgrace.  Death  she  did  not  fear,  for  she  killed  herself. 
Lucretia  wished  to  live  only  long  enough  to  explain  her 
fall  and  to  invoke  vengeance  upon  the  vanquisher  of  her 
virtue.  When  Brutus  snatched  the  dagger  from  her 
wound  and  swore  by  the  blood  that  stained  it  to  avenge 
Lucretia,  he  swore  by  the  blood  of  an  adulteress. 

Voltaire's  hero,  Candide,  with  the  more  than  tacit  ap- 
proval of  his  author,  yielded  to  a  demand  from  Ismael 
Raab  which  would  make  a  devil  blush  at  its  mere  relation. 

Neither  the  conventional  ethics  of  pagan  Rome,  the 
philosophy  of  the  eighteenth  century  nor  modern  ethical 
culture  ever  did,  ever  will  or  ever  can  produce  a  single 
martyr. 

But  Joseph  refused  to  do  wrong  because  it  would  dis- 
please God.  In  face  of  a  like  threat,  he  refused  to  do 
what  Lucretia  did.  In  the  natural  course  of  events,  there 
was  no  more  hope  of  vindication  in  his  case  than  hers. 
Dogma  against  sociology.  Which? 

Let  us  now  compare  the  death  of  a  great  pagan  with 
the  death  of  a  great  Christian.  Zeno,  the  founder  of  the 
sect  called  stoics,  taught  the  attainment  of  virtue  should 
be  the  object  of  man's  existence.  He  was,  possibly,  the 
most  enlightened  and  virtuous  pagan  that  ever  lived.  The 
religions  of  Greece  and  Rome  were  almost  identical,  but 


EPISTLE  DEDICATORY  45 

neither  was  ethical.  All  the  ethics  of  both  races  was 
either  conventional  or  philosophical.  Now  let  us  see  how 
this  most  virtuous  pagan  died.  At  the  age  of  ninety-eight, 
Zeno  was  still  teaching  in  Athens.  As  he  was  walking 
out  of  his  school,  he  fell  and  broke  one  of  his  fingers. 
At  this  he  was  so  affected  by  the  consciousness  of  his  own 
infirmity  that,  striking  the  earth,  he  cried  out,"Erchomai 
ti  m'aueis" — "I  am  coming.  Why  callest  thou  me?"  and 
immediately  went  home  and  committed  suicide. 

Paul,  chained  to  a  Roman  soldier,  in  the  same  dungeon 
which  had  held  Jugertha  and  Cethegus,  wrote  these 
words : 

"I  have  fought  a  good  fight,  I  have  finished  my  course,  I  have 
kept  the  faith.  For  the  rest,  there  is  laid  up  for  me  a  crown  of 
justice,  which  the  Lord,  the  just  judge,  shall  render  unto  me  at 
that  day."1 

I  say  with  Balaam : 

"Let  my  soul  die  the  death  of  the  just,  and  let  my  last  end  be 
like  to  them." 

Every  Jew  is  not  a  Joseph,  every  Christian  is  not  a 
Paul.  The  church  is.  not  a  cabinet  of  choice  specimens, 
but  an  ark  for  the  salvation  of  sinners.  If  you  see  a 
Christian  who  is  a  glutton,  a  drunkard  or  a  profane 
swearer,  do  not  be  impatient  because  he  does  not  add 
unbelief  to  all  his  other  sins.  For  with  what  judgment 
ye  judge  ye  shall  be  judged;  and  with  what  measure  ye 
mete,  it  shall  be  measured  to  you  again. 


xThe  Douai  Version  gives  the  correct  version  of  this  pass- 
age. The  Greek  word  apodosei  is  translated  reddet  in  Jerome's 
Vulgate,  but  give  in  James's  version,  and  I  am  surprised  to  see 
it  retained  in  the  Revised  Version.  The  infinitive  of  the  Greek 
verb — as  every  Greek  scholar  ought  to  know — never  could  mean 
aught  but  to  give  back,  restore,  return  what  is  due,  either  debts, 
penalties  or  honors.  The  idea  of  a  gratuity  could  never  be  in- 
volved in  any  mode  or  tense  of  that  verb. — W '.  F.  B. 


46  HISTORICAL  MAN  OF  NAZARETH 

Two  priests  walked  on  the  bank  of  a  little  stream  in 
Italy.  One  of  those  fearful  and  sudden  floods — so  com- 
mon to  that  stream — rushed  down.  A  horseman  was 
crossing  a  bridge  which  spanned  the  stream.  The  sup- 
port of  the  bridge  was  swept  away  and  the  structure  fell. 
The  horseman  went  down  to  his  yeasty  grave  uttering 
loud  curses  and  was  seen  no  more.  "That  man  is  in 
Hell,"  said  the  elder  priest.  The  younger  man  rebuked 
him,  saying  it  might  be  possible  that,  like  the  penitent 
thief,  he  had  repented  at  the  last.  They  agreed  that  the 
one  of  the  two  that  died  first  should  return — if  allowed 
to  do  so — with  information  as  to  the  horseman's  final 
destiny.  Years  passed  by.  The  old  priest  had  gone  to  a 
distant  part  of  Italy.  The  young  man  had  forgotten  the 
matter,  till  one  day  he  was  sitting  in  his  study,  when  the 
old  man  suddenly  entered  the  room.  The  young  man 
was  startled : 

"Whence  come  you?" 

"From  Hell." 

"How  comes  it?" 

"Do  you  remember  the  morning  we  walked  by  the  bank  of  the 
river  and  witnessed  the  drowning  of  the  solitary  horseman?" 

"I  do  now  recall  it." 

"That  man  repented  at  the  last  moment  of  life  and  was  saved. 
I  am  in  Hell  for  condemning  him." 

This  legend  carries  its  own  moral.  I  do  not  believe  in 
living  a  life  of  sin,  and  repenting  in  articnlo  mortis.  That 
is  drinking  the  wine  from  the  cup  of  life  and  throwing 
the  dregs  in  the  face  of  Christ.  But  it  is  never  too  late 
to  mend.  In  Prescott's  Conquest  of  Peru  you  will  read 
of  the  death  of  Pizarro  by  the  assassins  headed  by  Juan 
de  Harrada;  how  the  ruthless  plunderer  of  Peru  made 
the  sign  of  the  cross  in  his  own  blood,  uttered  the  word 
Jesn,  and,  before  he  could  kiss  the  cross,  died  by  a  coup 


EPISTLE  DEDICATORY  47 

de  grace.  Say  what  you  will,  despite  his  cruelty  and 
rapacity,  faith  remained. 

Christianity  since  its  foundation  has  had  to  war  with 
the  depraved  nature  of  man.  Juvenal  in  his  Satires,  and 
Paul  in  his  Epistle  to  the  Romans  have  pictured  what 
pagan  society  was  at  the  foundation  of  Christianity.  The 
Jewish  historian,  Josephus,  relates  an  incident  which 
shows  in  what  depths  of  corruption,  depravity,  sensuality 
and  superstition  the  pagan  contemporaries  of  Christ  were 
plunged  :* 

Decius  Mundus,  a  Roman  equestrian,  coveted  Paulina, 
the  wife  of  Saturninus,  a  patrician,  but  his  unholy  love 
was  not  reciprocated.  Mundus  had  resolved  upon  suicide, 
when  Ide,  a  free  woman  of  his  father,  diverted  him  arid 
undertook  to  satisfy  his  desire.  With  money  furnished 
by  Mundus,  she  bribed  some  of  the  priests  of  Isis  to  tell 
Paulina  that  she  was  the  favorite  of  the  dog-headed  god, 
Anubis,  recently  imported  from  Egypt,  and  that  he  loved 
her.  She  told  her  husband,  and  they  were  both  proud  of 
the  honor.  The  silly  woman  supped  and  passed  a  night 
in  the  temple  with  what  she  supposed  was  a  god,  but 
learned  too  late  was  her  rejected  lover.  She  conjured 
her  husband  to  avenge  her  injury,  but  she  did  not,  like 
Lucretia,  commit  suicide.  Saturninus  was  no  Virginius 
or  Daniel  Sickles,  but  complained  to  the  emperor.  Ti- 
berius, whatever  faults  he  may  have  had,  was  stern  in 
the  administration  of  justice.  After  due  investigation, 
the  emperor  banished  Mundus,  but  inflicted  the  same  pun- 


'Gaius  Julius  Caesar,  if  living  today  and  guilty  of  what  he  was 
charged  with,  according  to  Suetonius,  would  be  ostracised  from 
the  society  of  even  bad  men.  I  do  not  believe  him  guilty,  but  it 
shows  the  state  of  Roman  society  when  such  a  crime  was  credited 
to  the  first  statesman  and  general  of  his  age,  without  injury  to 
his  standing.  The  story  of  the  virtuous  Cato's  divorce  is  familiar 
to  all.— W.  F.  B. 


48  HISTORICAL  MAN  OF  NAZARETH 

ishment  upon  Ide  and  the  corrupted  priests  which  his 
procurator  unjustly  inflicted  upon  the  divine  subject  of 
this  book,  and  he  ordered  the  image  of  Isis  to  be  thrown 
into  the  Tiber  and  her  temple  to  be  destroyed.  We  may 
sneer  at  the  folly  of  this  Roman  woman,  but  it  hardly  ex- 
ceeds the  credulity  of  the  dupes  of  modern  spiritualism. 

Human  history  represents  a  fierce  struggle  between 
man's  material  interests  and  pure  idealism.  The  man  of 
Nazareth  was  crucified  to  save  the  graft  of  the  Saddu- 
cean  priesthood.  The  Ephesian  silversmiths  raised  an 
uproar,  because  the  preaching  of  Paul  interfered  with 
their  trade.  The  Philippian  accusers  of  Paul  and  Silas 
were  moved  by  a  similar  impulse,  as  we  read  in  the  six- 
teenth chapter  of  Acts.  Voltaire's  Zadig  was  in  danger 
of  slow  fire  because  of  the  abolition  of  sutteeism — the 
jewels  and  ornaments  of  the  women  were  the  perquisites 
of  the  priests  who  condemned  Zadig  to  be  burned.  Pure 
idealists  like  St.  Paul,  Jeanne  d'Arc,1  John  Howard, 
and  Osawatomie  Brown  are  generally  beheaded,  burned, 
hanged,  or  die  in  the  wilderness — unless  like  Frau  Krii- 
dener,1  they  stand  with  the  powers  that  be.  The  next  gen- 
eration mentally  reverses  the  judgment  and  consigns  them 
to  the  mad-house.  When  "in  the  long  revenge  of  time,"  a 
costly  mausoleum  arises,  immortal  fame  has  made  such  a 
tribute  ridiculous. 

This  humble  effort  of  mine,  to  which  this  letter  forms 
a  rambling  preface,  was  written  to  establish  the  historical 
character  of  the  Gospel  narrations.  It  does  not  treat  the 
life  of  Christ  in  detail.  It  does  not  discuss  the  time  of  his 
birth,  the  length  of  his  ministry,  or  his  age  at  his 
death.  These  minor  questions  might  draw  attention  from 
weightier  matters. 

'See  note  at  end  of  this  letter.— W.  F.  B. 


EPISTLE  DEDICATORY  49 

There  are  many  things  in  the  Gospel  which  have  both- 
ered me.  I  confess  that  I  never  quite  understood  the 
parable  of  the  unjust  steward  in  the  sixteenth  chapter  of 
Luke,  and  no  explanation  has  proved  quite  satisfactory 
to  me.  But  is  it  wise  to  throw  away  the  Gospel,  because 
I  can  not  explain  a  parable?  As  well  might  we  reject 
geometry,  because  the  squaring  of  the  circle  is  an  un- 
solved problem.  As  St.  Peter  said,  there  are  many  things 
in  the  Scriptures  hard  to  be  understood,  which  they  that 
are  unstable  and  unlearned  wrest  to  their  own  destruction. 
A  quarter  of  a  century  ago,  I  came  to  the  conclusion  that 
I  was  not  a  theologian,  and  remained  steadfast  in  that 
opinion.  One  of  the  most  worthless  books  that  I  ever 
saw  was  entitled  Every  Man  His  Own  Lawyer.  I  regard 
the  amateur  theologian  with  the  same  distrust  as  I  do  the 
amateur  lawyer. 

In  regard  to  the  differences  which  distract  the  Chris- 
tian world,  you  have  often  heard  my  opinion.  But  that 
is  not  the  subject  of  this  book. 

When  you  are  dealing  with  the  subject  of  religion,  re- 
member it  is  the  most  important  problem  of  life.  Upon 
its  proper  solution,  your  most  sacred  interests  depend. 

Sincerely, 

WILBUR  F.  BRYANT. 

Hartington,  Christmas,  1907. 


5O  HISTORICAL  MAN  OF  NAZARETH 


NOTES  TO  EPISTLE  DEDICATORY 

Agnostic. — One  of  a  school  of  philosophers  who  simply  recog- 
nise natural  phenomena,  disclaiming  all  knowledge  of  the  origin 
of  the  universe,  and  neither  denying  nor  admitting  the  existence 
of  the  Deity  or  human  existence  after  death.  It  is  from  the  Greek 
agnosko — I  do  not  know.  It  would  be  unjust  to  identify  those 
philosophers  with  the  ancient  skeptics.  For  they  maintained  that 
no  certain  inference  could  be  drawn  from  the  senses,  and  dis- 
trusted even  natural  phenomena. — W .  F.  B. 

Atheist. — From  alpha,  privative,  and  theos,  Greek  for  God; 
one  who  denies  the  existence  of  God. — W.  F.  B. 

Boucher  dc  Perthes. — Eminent  French  archaeologist  (1788- 
1868),  author  of  Celtic  and  Antedelnvian  Antiquities,  in  which  he 
attempted  to  prove,  with  apparent  success,  the  great  antiquity 
of  man  upon  this  planet.  He  might  almost  be  classed  as  a 
Columbus  in  his  field.  It  would  be  presumption  in  an  amateur 
to  publish  a  dogmatic  opinion ;  and  I  will  only  say  that,  granted 
the  utmost  limit  of  age  claimed  for  these  relics,  they  do  not  prove 
the  pre-Adamic  man.  For  no  one  can  construct  a  system  of  chro- 
nology from  Christ  back  to  Adam — out  of  Scripture — without 
pinning  his  fabric  to  several  extrinsic  semi-mythical  dates.  The 
pre-Adamic  man  may  furnish  Jack  London  with  a  good  subject 
for  a  novel,  but  as  a  historic  character  he  is  a  total  failure.  But 
a  man  even  skilled  in  the  science,  but  unskilled  in  the  particular 
branch  of  the  science  under  investigation,  is  not  always  in  a  posi- 
tion to  criticise  the  scientific  investigator.  To  illustrate,  only  the 
trained  eye  of  an  astronomer  could  make  a  practical  survey  of 
the  Martian  canals  of  Schiaparelli.  Only  a  person  of  scientific 
training  could  appreciate  Charles  Darwin's  Monograph  of  the 
Cirrhipedia.  The  same  is  true  in  the  domain  of  archaeology.  My 
sympathies  are  with  the  scientist  assailed  as  Professor  Taylor  as- 
sailed Silliman,  with  the  absurd  hypothesis  that  the  Almighty  had 
stirred  trilobites  into  the  earth  as  the  cook  would  stir  plums  into 
a  pudding.  Romanes  afterward  sarcastically  suggested  that  the 
Almighty  did  this  to  fool  people.  Nothing  makes  a  man  more 
truthful  than  a  fearless  investigation  into  any  branch  of  physical 


NOTES  TO  EPISTLE  DEDICATORY  5 1 

science.  Others  have  followed  Boucher  de  Perthes.  The  finding 
of  certain  skeletons  in  Gilder's  mound  near  Florence,  Nebraska, 
is  too  recent  to  demand  elaboration.  My  friend,  Professor  Bar- 
bour  of  the  State  University  of  Nebraska,  whose  character  as  a 
man,  and  ability,  attainments  and  industry  as  a  geologist  are  too 
well  known  to  require  eulogy,  is  of  the  opinion  that  these  skele- 
tons had  been  buried  for  10,000  or  12,000  years.  The  conclusions 
of  Ales  Hrdlicka,  the  distinguished  anthropologist,  who  seems 
predisposed  to  skepticism  in  this  matter,  differs  from  Professor 
Barbour  as  to  the  age  of  the  relics.  See  Skeletal  Remains  Sug- 
gesting or  Attributed  to  Early  Man  in  North  America,  Smith- 
sonian Institution,  Bulletin  33,  Washington,  1907.  But  see  Doctor 
Ward  in  Putnam's,  January,  1907,  410-413.— W.  F.  B. 

Bridgewatcr  Treatises. — Francis  Henry  Bridgewater,  Earl  of 
Bridgewater,  died  in  1829,  at  the  advanced  age  of  ninety-three 
years.  By  his  will  he  bequeathed  eight  thousand  pounds  to  be 
paid  to  the  person  or  persons  who  should  be  appointed  by  the 
president  of  the  Royal  Society  to  prepare  a  work  on  natural  re- 
ligion. The  will  was  as  specific  in  its  details  as  the  will  of  Ste- 
phen Girard.  Eight  treatises  were  written,  one  each  by  Thomas 
Chalmers,  John  Kidd,  William  Whewell,  Peter  Mark  Roget, 
William  Buckland,  William  Prout,  Charles  Bell  and  William 
Kirby.  The  advocate  of  the  chimpanzee  genealogical  tree,  of 
course,  considers  these  treatises  back  numbers. — W.  F.  B. 

Brown,  Osawatomie. — John  Brown  of  Kansas  and  Harpers 
Ferry  fame.  1800-1859. 

Christianity. — It  is  not  the  intention  in  this  letter  to  place 
Christianity  on  a  plane  with  any  other  religion.  Judaism,  Mo- 
hammedanism and  Parsiism  are  good  so  far  only  as  they  re- 
semble Christianity.  Christianity  was  the  fruition  of  Judaism. 
Mohammedanism  is  modified  Judaism.  Parsiism  is  a  modifica- 
tion of  the  primitive  religion  of  the  human  race. — W.  F.  B. 

"Curse  God  and  Die"  is  the  rendering  of  the  words  of  Job's 
wife  in  King  James's  version.  Benedic  Deo  et  morere,  is  the  read- 
ing of  the  Vulgate.  The  former  is  what  she  meant:  the  latter  is 
what  she  said.  The  employment  of  a  soft  word  for  a  harsh  is 
known  to  all  polite  nations.  The  Roman  disliked  the  verb  morere, 
and  said  of  the  departed  vixit — he  has  lived.  Who  has  not  heard 
a  scrivener  or  notary  before  asking  an  illiterate  person  to  make 
his  mark,  "I  believe,  Mr.  Blank,  you  do  not  write,"  instead  of 


52  HISTORICAL  MAN  OF  NAZARETH 

"you  can  not  write"?  The  expression  of  bless  for  curse  is  heard 
occasionally  among  rustics,  where  archaic  expressions  linger  long- 
est— W.  F.  B. 

Darwin,  Charles  Robert,  the  most  famous  scientist  since  New- 
ton, founder  of  the  sect  of  chimpanzeeites,  born  February  12, 
1809,  an  Englishman,  son  of  an  eminent  physician,  Charles  War- 
ring Darwin,  grandson  of  Erasmus  Darwin,  the  poet,  whose  fan- 
tastic ideas  communicated  to  Mrs.  Shelley,  through  the  medium 
of  her  husband  and  Lord  Byron,  gave  birth  to  her  remarkable 
romance  Frankenstein.  The  fame  of  the  grandfather  is  eclipsed 
by  that  of  the  grandson,  who  was  born  on  the  same  day  as  Abra- 
ram  Lincoln,  and  it  is  a  matter  worthy  of  debate  which  will  have 
the  most  enduring  fame.  Thomas  Paine,  famous  as  a  political 
agitator  in  England,  America  and  France,  died  the  same  year. 
Darwin  was  a  great  chemist,  a  great  botanist,  a  great  zoologist, 
a  great  geologist,  a  great  comparative  anatomist,  but  a  poor  logi- 
cian, a  faulty  philosopher.  The  Origin  of  Species  contains  its 
own  refutation.  Some  of  Darwin's  admirers,  particularly  Ben- 
jamin F.  Underwood,  have  claimed  that  he  never  taught  that 
man  was  descended  from  any  existing  species  of  ape,  but  simply 
that  he  had  been  evolved  from  ape-like  species.  To  prove  that 
he  taught  the  baboon  and  monkey  descent  of  man,  it  is  only  nec- 
essary to  read  the  two  or  three  closing  pages  of  his  Descent  of 
Man.  Darwin  did  enough  and  wrote  enough  to  make  him  great, 
without  this  fallacious  addendum  to  his  fame.  Died  April  19, 
1882.— W.  F.  B. 

Deist. — A  person  who  believes  in  a  personal  God  distinct  from 
nature  itself,  but  who  rejects  the  supernatural  revelation. — W. 
F.B. 

Galileo  Galilei. — An  eminent  Italian  mathematician  and  nat- 
ural philosopher;  born  at  Pisa,  1564,  died  at  Florence,  1642.  He 
discovered  the  isochronism  of  the  vibrations  of  the  pendulum ; 
the  law  governing  velocity  of  falling  bodies ;  invented  the  ther- 
mometer; and,  though  not  the  first  inventor  of  the  telescope,  he 
was  the  first  to  make  it  of  practical  use  in  astronomy.  With  this 
instrument  he  discovered  the  satellites  of  Jupiter,  the  rings  of 
Saturn,  the  phases  of  Venus,  the  longitudinal  and  diurnal  libra- 
tions  of  the  moon,  and  the  solar  spots.  Galileo  was  an  epoch- 
maker  in  astronomical  science.  He  accepted  the  heliocentric  theory 
of  our  planetary  system,  known  before  his  time  to  the.  ancient 


NOTES   TO  EPISTLE  DEDICATORY  53 

Assyrians  and  maintained  by  Pythagoras,  Aristarchus  of  Samos, 
Cusa,  Copernicus,  Diego  di  Zunica,  Foscarini  and  Giordano  Bruno, 
but  which  had  been  superseded  by  the  clumsy  hypothesis  of  Ptol- 
emy of  Alexandrea.    The  Ptolemaic  theory  had  come  to  Europe 
from  the  Mohammedans  through  the  Moorish  empire  of  Spain,  the 
Crusades,  and  the  conquest  of  Constantinople.     Galileo's  discov- 
eries would  have  made  him  immortal,  but  he  dwells  in  popular 
memory  chiefly  because  of  his   trial   before  the  Holy   Office,  a 
proceeding  which  has  been  grossly  misunderstood.    It  is  safe  to 
say  that  every  popular  account  of  it  is  more  or  less  false.    This 
proceeding  was  for  a  contempt  of  court  in  disobeying  an  order 
of  the  Congregation  of  the  Index  forbidding  him  to  teach  the 
heliocentric  theory.    The  res  of  the  contempt  was  his  Dialogues, 
which  he  claimed  taught  the  geocentric  or  Ptolemaic  theory.    But 
a  commission  of  experts,  to  which  the  work  was  submitted,  re- 
ported that  the  author  of  the  book  certainly  believed  in  the  helio- 
centric theory.     Under  the  law,  when  there  was  a  disagreement 
between  the  statement  of  a  suspected  author  and  the  apparent 
purport  of  the  book,  torture  could  be  applied  to  the  prisoner  for 
the  purpose  of  eliciting  the  truth.     Galileo  was  menaced  with 
torture,  but  not  tortured.     In  fact,  he  could  not  be  tortured  under 
the  law,  both  on  account  of  his  age  and  from  the  fact  that  he 
was  suffering  from  a  hernia.    His  judges  knew  this,  but  he,  prob- 
ably, did  not.     Galileo  showed  anything  but  want  of  fortitude; 
he  was  like  a  schoolboy  under  the  old  regime — telling  a  lie  and 
sticking  to  it,  in  the  face  of  a  threatened  flogging.   The  abjuration 
required  of  him   was   a   purging   of  contempt — placing   in   legal 
formula,  with   some  amplification,  the  denial   which  he  had  al- 
ready voluntarily  made.    He  was  sentenced  as  a  suspected  heretic 
to  imprisonment  during  the  pleasure  of  the -Holy  Office;  he  was 
confined,  first  at  Sienna,  afterward  in  his  own  villa  at  Arcetri, 
near  Florence,  during  the  term  of  his  natural  life — for  nine  years 
after  his  trial.    It  was  at  the  latter  place  where  Milton  saw  him. 
Galileo,  probably,  had  the  freedom  of  his  own  grounds,  but  he 
could  not  go  into  town  without  leave.     The  contempt  proceeding 
against  Galileo  Galilei  did  not  differ  materially  from  the  proceed- 
ing against  Eugene  V.  Debs.    Of  course  it  is  hard  to  understand 
how  the  first  order,  which  Galileo   disobeyed,  could  ever  have 
been  made,  as  the  voyage  of  Juan  Sebastian  del  Cano  had  ex- 
ploded the  Homeric  theory,  and  the  Ptolemaic  theory  conflicted 


54  HISTORICAL  MAN  OF  NAZARETH 

as  much  with  the  apparent  meaning  of  certain  texts  of  Scripture 
as  did  the  heliocentric  theory.  But  as  held  in  the  Debs  Case, 
where  the  court  has  jurisdiction,  it  must  be  obeyed,  right  or 
wrong.  The  court  that  tried  Galileo  was  the  Roman  Inquisition, 
established  by  a  papal  bull  of  date  July  21,  3542,  ninety-one  years 
before  his  trial.  It  had  universal,  original  and  appellate  juris- 
diction throughout  the  world.  It  inflicted  only  the  minor  pena! 
repressions,  turning  the  obstinate  and  incorrigible  over  to  the 
secular  ruler  or  magistrate,  who  was  compelled  to  favor  the 
proceedings  of  the  Inquisition,  under  pain  of  excommunication. 
At  Galileo's  death  the  heliocentric  theory  was  no  more  than  a 
very  probable  hypothesis.  He,  himself,  in  his  private  correspond- 
ence, sometimes  denied  and  sometimes  affirmed  the  opinion,  ac- 
cording to  his  correspondent.  His  duplicity  in  this  and  at  his 
trial  can  be  easily  understood  by  any  one  who  will  read  the  fine 
analysis  of  the  Italian  character  of  the  century  before  Galileo — 
it  had  probably  not  materially  changed — in  Macaulay's  Essay  of 
Machiavelli.  Galileo,  undoubtedly,  thought  that  posterity  would 
understand  his  Dialogues;  and  he  did  not  care  what  his  contem- 
poraries thought  about  it,  as  he  felt  confident  the  heliocentric 
theory  would  finally  prevail.  Kepler's  three  physical  laws  of 
planetary  motion  had  been  discovered  fifteen  years  before  Galileo's 
trial.  In  1685,  Sir  Isaac  Newton  simplified  the  three  in  one, 
known  as  the  Newtonian  law  of  gravitation.  In  1727,  James 
Bradley  discovered  the  aberration  of  light,  which  demonstrated 
that  the  earth  was  moving  in  space.  These  three  discoveries 
closed  the  question  in  favor  of  the  heliocentric  theory.  Thirty 
years  after  the  last  discovery,  Benedict  XIV.  suspended  the  decree 
of  the  Congregation  of  the  Index — of  date  March  5,  1616 — the 
same  for  which  Galileo  had  incurred  condemnation  in  disobeying. 
As  the  purpose  of  this  work  is  not  the  discussion  of  controverted 
points  between  Catholics  and  Protestants,  the  bearing  of  this 
affair  on  papal  infallibility  will  not  be  touched.  Any  one  desirous 
of  examining  this  question  is  referred  to  two  articles  in  the 
Dublin  Review,  one  in  the  April  number  for  1871,  entitled, 
Copernicanism  and  Paul  V.',  the  other  in  the  July  number  for 
the  same  year,  entitled,  Galileo  and  the  Pontifical  Congregations 
The  statement  of  Draper  in  his  Conflict  between  Religion  and 
Science  that  Galileo  was  denied  burial  in  consecrated  ground  is 
a  mistake.  He  sleeps  in  Santa  Croce,  the  Westminster  of  Flor- 
ence.— W.  F.  B. 

I 


NOTES  TO  EPISTLE  DEDICATORY  55 

Gibbon,  Edward. — English  historian  (1737-1794),  author  of 
the  Decline  and  Fall  of  the  Roman  Empire,  probably  the  greatest 
work  that  was  ever  the  product  of  a  single  mind. — W '.  F.  B. 

Herbert,  Edward  (1581-1648).— Deist.  Wrote De  Veritate,  1524. 
W.  F.  B. 

Hettinger,  From  (1819-1890.) — German  Roman  Catholic  cler- 
gyman and  scholar.  His  work  on  Natural  Religion  is  the  best 
treatise  which  I  have  ever  seen  upon  that  subject.  No  clergyman, 
of  any  denomination,  can  afford  to  be  without  it. — W.  F.  B. 

Hume,  David.  —  Scottish  historian  and  philosopher  (1711- 
1776),  author  of  History  of  England;  apologist  for  the  house  of 
Stuart.— H'.  F.  B. 

Jeanne  d'Arc. — Maid  of  Orleans. — W.  F.  B. 
Kepler,  John. — German  astronomer,  born  seven  years  after 
Galileo.  Like  Galileo,  he  was  an  advocate  of  the  heliocentric 
theory.  For  this  he  was  condemned  by  the  Lutheran  Theological 
Faculty  of  Tubingen,  in  1596.  Quitting  his  native  Wiirtemberg, 
he  sought  refuge  with  the  Jesuits  of  Gratz  and  Ingoldstadt,  who 
received  him  with  open  arms  and  afterward  obtained  for  him  a 
lucrative  and  honorable  position.  Some  Catholic  writers  plead 
this  as  a  kind  of  set-off  to  the  story  of  Galileo,  but  it  really 
proves  nothing,  except  that  the  Faculty  of  Tubingen,  as  well  as 
the  Congregation  of  the  Index,  were  mistaken  in  a  matter  of 
biblical  exegesis.  The  Society  of  Jesus,  probably,  loved  Kepler 
for  the  enemies  he  had  made. — W.  F.  B. 

Krudener,  Juliane  de  Vietinghoff. — Russian  novelist  and 
mystic  (1774-1824),  prophesied  Napoleon's  return  from  Elba  and 
the  second  overthrow  of  the  Bourbons.  The  articles  of  the  holy 
alliance  were  said  to  have  been  submitted  to  her  for  revision. 
She  was  a  sort  of  female  Tolstoi.  Frau  Krudener  was  the  con- 
fidante of  Alexander  I.,  but  was  finally  expelled  from  St.  Peters- 
burg for  revealing  state  secrets.  She  sought  to  found  a  colony 
of  her  disciples  in  the  Crimea,  but  died  there  before  the  settle- 
ment was  perfected. — W .  F.  B. 

Lucian. — Greek  writer  of  uncertain  date,  born  at  Samosata,  on 
the  Euphrates,  Syrian  by  race;  apprenticed  to  a  stonecutter,  a 
maker  of  pagan  images  of  Mercury;  ran  away  from  his  master 
and  returned  to  his  home;  studied  rhetoric;  began  practice  at 
the  bar,  but  left  it  in  disgust  to  make  a  fortune  as  a  declaimer 


56  HISTORICAL  MAN  OF  NAZARETH 

and  teacher  of  what  moderns  would  call  elocution;  was  ten  years 
in  Gaul;  finally  settled  in  Athens;  lived  to  a  great  age,  whether 
eighty  or  one  hundred  at  his  death  depends  upon  the  uncertain 
date  of  his  birth.  Though  an  Asiatic,  he  acquired  a  pure  Greek 
style  and  was  almost  as  much  the  master  of  Attic  as  Xenophon 
himself.  Lucian,  like  Swift,  sometimes  makes  slips  in  syntax, 
but  unlike  Shakspere  and  Gaius  Julius  Caesar,  he  has  had  no 
obliging  commentator  to  fit  his  false  syntax  onto  some  imaginary 
theory  of  correct  diction.  But  none  but  a  pedant,  incapable  of 
appreciating  Lucian's  merit,  would  dwell  upon  these  trifles,  which 
are  hardly  more  of  blemishes  than  spots  on  the  solar  disc.  Lucian 
devoted  his  last  years  to  literature  and  wrote  inter  alia,  Dialogues 
of  the  Dead,  and  Dialogues  of  the  Gods.  Philopatris,  formerly 
attributed  to  him,  is  now  generally  believed  to  have  been  the 
work  of  a  later  writer.  If  this  is  correct,  he  was  a  close  imitator. 
Few  writers  have  been  more  the  subject  of  contention  than  Lucian. 
He  was  such  a  master  of  refined  satire  that  it  is  sometimes  im- 
possible to  tell  whether  he  is  satirical  or  serious.  Some  critics 
who  have  disputed  his  authorship  of  Philopatris  have  even  claimed 
that  he  was  secretly  a  Christian.  This,  however,  though  possible, 
is  not  very  probable.  But  the  story  that  he  was  torn  by  dogs 
for  ridiculing  Christianity  is  a  fable.  Outside  of  Philopatris,  there 
is  nothing  which  can  be  set  down  as  an  attack  upon  Christianity. 
Lucian  calls  Christ  "the  crucified  sophist,"  but,  however  this  ex- 
pression may  sound  to  our  ears,  it  is  not  irreverent  coming  from 
him.  Little  is  known  of  Lucian's  private  life,  except  that  he  was 
a  dutiful  and  grateful  son  who  provided  for  his  parents  in  their 
old  age  In  his  old  age,  his  own  means  appear  to  have  been 
limited,  for  he  accepted  a  sinecure  at  the  hands  of  the  Roman 
Imperator.  Lucian's  fondest  admirer  among  great  modern  writers 
is  M.  Ernest  Renan.  See  Voltaire,  infra.— W.  F.  B. 

Pantheist  is  from  the  Greek,  pas,  passa,  pan,  all,  and  theos.  God. 
It  designates  a  person  who  believes  that  the  material  universe  is 
God,  or  answers  to  God,  as  our  bodies  answer  to  ourselves;  that 
is,  God  has  the  same  relation  to  the  universe  as  man's  soul  has 
to  his  body.  This  doctrine  involves  the  eternity  of  matter. — 
W.  F.  B. 

Lucretia.— Destructive  critics  of  profane  history  are  disposed 
to  doubt  everything  from  the  Colossus  of  Rhodes  to  George 
Washington's  hatchet  Now,  they  deny  the  story  of  Lucretia, 


NOTES  TO  ETISTLF.  DEDICATORY  57 

Collatinus  and  Sextus  Tarquinius.  Two  thousand  years  from 
now  they  will  deny  the  stories  of  Florinda,  Count  Julian  and 
Roderick,  the  Goth.  Gibbon  has  called  attention  to  the  resem- 
blance between  the  two  accounts.  In  two  thousand  years,  they 
will  claim  that  one  was  taken  from  the  other.  They  could  have 
no  possible  connection.  It  is  like  the  claim  that  William  Tell 
was  a  myth  because'  Saxo  Grammaticus  tells  the  same  story 
about  somebody  else.  I  would  respectfully  call  attention  to  the 
story  of  Idomeneus  sacrificing  his  son,  as  told  by  the  later  classical 
writers,  and  the  story  of  Jephtha  sacrificing  his  daughter,  as  re- 
lated in  the  book  of  Judges.  Will  some  destructive  critic  point 
out  how  one  of  these  accounts  could  have  been  taken  from  the 
other?  If  we  can  trust  the  best  chronology  at  hand,  they  could 
not  have  occurred  more  than  twenty-five  years  apart.  What  con- 
nection did  the  Greeks  have  with  the  Hebrews? — W.  F.  B. 

Paley,  William  (1743-1805). — Author,  inter  alia,  of  A  View  of 
the  Evidences  of  Christianity,  Natural  Theology  and  Horae 
Paulinae.  He  enjoyed  an  immense  popularity  for  nearly  a  cen- 
tury, but  this  was  due  largely  to  his  style  of  writing,  which  was 
a  transition  from  the  Johnsonian  style  which  prevailed  in  England 
before  his  time.  His  Horae  Paulinae  is  a  wonderful  book.  His 
Evidences  is  little  more  than  an  abridgment  of  Lardner,  but  it 
pays  to  read  it. — W.  F.  B. 

Rousseau,  John  James  (1712-1778). — Deistical  philosopher,  is 
now  chiefly  known  as  the  author  of  Emile,  a  work  on  pedagogy 
very  popular  among  educators.  He  was  also  the  author  of  Le 
Control  Social — the  gospel  of  the  French  Revolution — and  many 
other  works.  He  lived  for  many  years  with  a  coarse  and  ignorant 
woman  whom  he  married  before  his  death.  Rousseau  had  by 
her  five  children.  These  he  sent  to  the  foundling  hospital  as 
soon  as  they  were  born.  In  his  celebrated  Confessions,  to  which 
he  owes  half  his  fame,  Rousseau  says : 

"Let  the  last  trumpet  sound  when  it  will.  I  will  come  with  this 
book  in  my  hand  and  will  present  myself  before  the  sovereign 
judge.  I  will  boldly  proclaim:  'Thus  have  I  acted,  thus  have  I 
thought,  such  was  I.'  ...  Assemble  around  me  the  number- 
less throng  of  my  fellow  mortals;  let  them  listen  to  my  confes- 
sions, let  them  blush  at  my  depravity;  let  them  shrink  appalled  at 
my  miseries.  Let  each  of  them,  in  his  turn,  with  equal  sincerity, 
lay  bare  his  heart  at  the  foot  of  the  throne,  and  then  let  a  single 
one  tell  thee,  if  he  dare :  '/  was  better  than  that  man.' " 


58  HISTORICAL  MAN  OF  NAZARETH 

Rousseau  must  have  had  supreme  confidence  in  the  depravity 
of  the  human  heart.  His  expression  comparing  the  death  of 
Sokrates  with  the  death  of  Christ  is  generally  quoted  as  para- 
phrased by  William  Wirt  in  his  Letters  of  a  British  Spy,  and  the 
paraphrase  is  an  improvement  upon  the  original. — W .  F.  B. 

Theodore  of  Corsica. — Few  men  have  been  surrounded  with 
such  a  halo  of  romance  and  mawkish  sentiment  as  this  man.  Yet 
he  was  as  great  a  vagabond  as  the  notorious  Count  Johannes,  but 
he  still  occupies  a  place  in  history.  As  is  the  case  with  every  shift- 
ing adventurer,  possessed  of  a  fertile  imagination,  there  is  a  great 
uncertainty  as  to  the  facts  of  his  life.  Theodore  von  Neuhof,  the 
son  of  a  Westphalian  baron  settled  in  France,  was  born  at  Metz 
about  1686.  In  his  youth,  Neuhof  was  a  page  of  the  Duchess  of 
Orleans.  Afterward,  while  a  student  at  Cologne,  he  killed  an- 
other nobleman  in  a  duel  and  fled  to  Sweden.  Here  he  ingra- 
tiated himself  into  the  good  graces  of  Gortz,  the  prime  minister 
of  Charles  XII.  Neuhof  was  employed  in  the  secret  foreign  ser- 
vice. After  the  fall  of  Gortz,  Othello's  occupation  was  gone. 
The  scoundrel  duped  Lady  Sarsfield  into  marrying  him.  He 
robbed  his  wife  of  her  jewels  and  fled  from  France  to  Italy, 
whence  he  sailed  to  Africa  and  acted  for  more  than  fifteen  years 
as  interpreter  to  the  dey  of  Algiers.  Neuhof  succeeded  in  in- 
ducing the  dey  of  Algiers  and  the  bey  of  Tunis  to  furnish  him 
with  4,000  muskets,  two  regiments,  a  little  ammunition  and  money, 
under  the  pretense  that  he  could  conquer  Corsica  for  those  pirates. 
It  is  probable  that  he  had  turned  Moslem  during  his  sojourn  in 
Africa.  Neuhof  sailed  to  Leghorn,  where  he  met  some  Corsicans 
whom  he  told  that,  if  they  would  recognise  him  as  their  king,  he 
would  deliver  them  from  the  tyranny  of  Genoa,  and  enlist  the 
sympathies  of  Europe  in  their  favor.  In  the  month  of  March, 
1735,  Neuhof  landed  at  Aleri.  April  15,  1736,  he  was  elected 
king,  as  Theodore  I.,  a  new  constitution  was  formed,  which  he 
swore  to  support ;  he  formed  a  court ;  conferred  titles  of  nobility. 
The  father  of  the  historic  Paoli  was  one  of  the  recipients.  The 
physical  advantages  which  the  rocky  and  mountainous  island 
afforded  and  the  enthusiasm  of  his  followers,  gave  him  ?.  tem- 
porary advantage  over  the  Genoese,  and  he  played  king  for  eight 
months,  keeping  up  the  courage  of  his  new  subjects  by  promises 
of  foreign  aid.  A  price  was  placed  upon  his*  head.  Neuhof  left 
the  island  under  the  pretense  of  hurrying  up  matters,  and  actually 


NOTES  TO   EPISTLE   DEDICATORY  59 

obtained  recognition  by  the  Netherlands,  and  a  loan  from  Jews  in 
Amsterdam  upon  a  promise  of  the  monopoly  of  Corsica's  trade. 
But  Genoa,  with  the  aid  of  France,  conquered  his  kingdom. 
Theodore  I.  sought  refuge  in  England.  An  attempt  to  regain  his 
throne  in  1745  proved  a  failure.  Finally  confined  to  a  debtor's 
cell,  he  found  a  friend  in  Horace  Walpole,  who  raised  a  sub- 
scription and  obtained  his  release.  Theodore  Neuhof  died  in 
London,  December  11,  1756.  He  was  buried  at  Westminster. 

The  details  of  his  career  in  Corsica  remind  one  of  Mark  Twain's 
humorous  account  of  the  revolution  in  Pitcairn's  island,  or  Daniel 
Pratt  as  candidate  for  President  in  1876.  Neuhof  could  speak 
many  languages  which  had  been  picked  up  easily  in  his  wander- 
ings, but,  aside  from  these,  his  attainments  were  not  unusual ; 
and  his  ability  was  ordinary.  Neuhof  had  a  knowledge  of  men 
and  of  the  weaknesses  of  human  nature ;  and  his  career  is  worthy 
of  study  as  an  example  of  what  can  be  done  With  a  glib  tongue, 
a  vivid  imagination  and  a  brazen  effrontery.  There  is  little  doubt 
that  George  Washington  or  Frederick  the  Great,  or  even  Shamyl, 
placed  in  the  same  situation  as  Neuhof,  would  have  achieved 
the  independence  of  Corsica.  Owing  to  the  facts  that  he  belongs 
to  the  history  of  the  island  that  gave  birth  to  Napoleon;  that 
the  couplet  on  his  tombstone  has  passed  into  a  proverb;  that  he 
is  mentioned  in  Voltaire's  greatest  work,  will  lend  to  the  name 
of  Theodore  of  Corsica  a  romantic  immortality. — W .  F.  B. 

Voltaire  (1694-1778). — Poet,  philosopher,  novelist,  and  mis- 
cellaneous writer,  the  most  distinguished  Frenchman  of  the 
eighteenth  century,  and  the  greatest  name  in  French  literature, 
friend  of  Bolingbroke  and  Pope,  was  twice  confined  in  the  Bas- 
tile;  released  on  condition  of  quitting  France;  chose  England  as 
his  place  of  exile;  afterwards  spent  several  years  at  the  court  of 
Frederick  the  Great;  protege  of  Catherine  II.  of  Russia,  who 
possessed  the  knack  of  finding  apologists  among  the  literary  men 
of  her  day;  lived  for  twenty  years  (1758-1778)  at  Ferney,  de- 
partment of  Ain,  on  the  Swiss  border,  only  four  or  five  miles 
from  Geneva ;  like  William  Shakspere,  was  a  successful  business 
man.  Voltaire  was  a  deist,  skeptical  on  almost  everything  but 
belief  in  God.  In  a  sickness  supposed  to  be  mortal,  he  prepared 
and  subscribed  the  following  statement : 

"I  die  adoring  God,  loving  my  friends,  not  hating  my  enemies, 
and  detesting  superstition. — Voltaire." 


60  HISTORICAL  MAN  OF  NAZARETH 

Voltaire  attacked  Christianity  in  the  same  manner  as  Lucian 
assailed  paganism.  Writing  as  though  he  were  an  orthodox  be- 
liever, he  ridiculed  the  supernatural  in  a  manner  similar  to  Gib- 
bon's celebrated  fifteenth  chapter.  Gibbon  took  his  cue  from 
Pascal's  Provincial  Letters,  and  the  resemblance  between  Lucian 
and  Voltaire  is  too  great  to  be  accidental.  The  coarse  simile  of 
John  Randolph  would  apply  as  a  metaphor  to  Voltaire  —  he 
"shines  and  stinks."  Voltaire  lived  for  fifteen  years  with  another 
man's  wife  during  the  life  of  her  husband.  This  woman  was 
Madame  du  Chatelet,  the  translator  of  Newton's  Principia;  and, 
as  is  evident  from  a  letter  written  to  her  by  him,  just  before  their 
conventional  separation,  their  relations  were  not  altogether  platonic 
His  biographers  have  passed  lightly  over  this  affair,  because,  for- 
sooth, such  things  were  fashionable  in  France,  and  the  husband 
was  satisfied.  As  though  fashion  could  repeal,  or  consent  to  sus- 
pend the  moral  law.  Others,  apparently,  think  that  people  like 
Byron,  Voltaire,  George  Eliot  and  Jim  Bludsoe  are  absolved 
from  obedience  to  the  Decalogue.  In  this  age  of  clean  names  for 
filthy  things,  their  relation  would  be  styled  an  affinity.  It  is  such 
moral  obliquity  which  makes  literature  dangerous  to  those  whose 
characters  are  unformed.  There  is  no  doubt  that  Voltaire,  when 
he  thought  he  was  about  to  die,  sent  for  a  clergyman,  received 
the  sacraments  and  signed  a  paper  asking  pardon  if  he  had  of- 
fended the  church.  But  it  is  equally  certain  that  he  did  this  to 
escape  the  potter's  field.  Voltaire  had  been  educated  by  the 
Jesuits,  and,  at  the  time  of  his  most  bitter  attacks  upon  ecclesi- 
asticism,  he  wrote  to  one  of  the  encyclopaedists  defending  the 
Society  of  Jesus.  He  was  dubbed  Antichrist  by  contemporary 
Capuchins,  denounced  by  Dr.  Johnson  as  a  felon  worthy  of  Old 
Bailey  and  barked  at  by  myriads  of  bipedal  phyces  whose  names, 
even,  are  forgotten.  On  the  other  hand,  Victor  Hugo  shaved  the 
edge  of  blasphemy  with,  "Jesus  wept  and  Voltaire  smiled." 

Voltaire's  place  in  history  is  greater  than  his  place  in  literature. 
And  his  influence,  for  good  or  for  evil,  will  continue  to  the  end 
of  time.  Was  that  influence  good,  evil  or  mixed?  This  ques- 
tion will  be  differently  answered,  according  to  the  varying  esti- 
mates which  men  may  place  upon  a  stable  religious  conviction, 
and  their  idea  of  reaching  and  obtaining  the  same.  Voltaire's 
masked  attacks  upon  the  Bible  are  puerile,  and-  his  open  attacks 
upon  organised  Christianity  are  misconceived.  As  the  unjust 


NOTES   TO   EPISTLE  DEDICATORY  6l 

steward  in  the  Gospel  parable  had  naught  to  commend  him  but 
his  cunning,  so  we  find  little  to  admire  in  Voltaire's  strictures  on 
Scripture  but  his  wit.  The  popular  knowledge  of  this  man  is 
limited  to  what  is  expressed  in  Cowper's  lines  r 

"Who,  for  the  bane  of  thousands  born, 
Built  God  a  church,  and  laughed  his  word  to  scorn." 

"The  Scripture  was  his  jest-book,  whence  he  drew 
Bon  mots  to  gall  the  Christian  and  the  Jew." 

His  Henriade  was  unduly  praised  by  his  contemporaries,  who 
placed  it  beside  the  Iliad  and  the  Aeneid.  This  is  absurd,  but  it 
was,  nevertheless,  an  epoch-making  book.  Henriade  is  an  epic 
poem  with  Henry  IV.,  popularly  known  as  Henry  of  Navarre, 
for  its  hero.  The  teaching  of  the  sentiment  of  religious  tolera- 
tion is  the  purpose  of  this  poem.  It  was  translated,  into  nearly 
every  modern  language  and  diffused  the  idea  of  universal  tolera- 
tion over  Europe.  By  those  who  agree  with  Abbe  Fleury  and 
Marsilius  of  Padua  that  the  dominion  of  the  Church  is  spiritual 
only  and  that  it  can  employ  no  coercive  punishment,  and  by  those 
who  believe  that  secular  governments  are  not  paternal  to  the 
extent  of  controlling  the  religious  opinions  of  subjects  or  citizens — 
by  these,  I  say,  Voltaire  might  be  revered  as  the  Apostle  of 
Liberty.  Such  people  might  argue  that  the  foolishness  of  intol- 
erance has  been  demonstrated  by  the  logic  of  events ;  that  we 
behold  in  Italy  and  Spain  the  fruit  of  the  Inquisition  and  in 
France  the  fruition  of  the  policy  of  Charles  IX.  and  Louis  XIV. ; 
that  all  three  of  these  countries  are  honeycombed  with  unbelief, 
but  that  in  Germany,  the  birthplace  of  Protestantism  and  the 
home  of  Rationalism,  where  Catholic  laymen  have  been  called 
upon  to  defend  their  faith,  the  Bishop  of  Rome  finds  his  most 
efficient  champions;  that  if  a  man's  religion  will  not  stand  the 
test  of  investigation,  there  is  something  the  matter — with  him  or 
his  religion;  that  supporting  Christianity  with  the  secular  arm 
weakens  it.  To  those  who  believe  that  the  church  de  facto  is  the 
church  de  jure,  whether  represented  by  a  St.  Thomas  of  Canter- 
bury, John  Calvin  or  Cotton  Mather;  that  all  governments  are 
of  divine  ordination ;  that  the  two — Church  and  State — each  in 
its  sphere,  are  the  joint  guardians  of  the  human  conscience — to 
these,  I  say,  Voltaire  would  appear  as  the  evil  genius  of  modern 
civilisation.  These  people  might  argue  that  the  condition  of 
France  came  about  through  the  influence  of  Voltaire,  Rousseau, 


62  HISTORICAL  MAN  OF  NAZARETH 

Diderot,  d'Alembert,  and  their  ilk;  that  it  came  because  re- 
pressive measures  were  not  adopted;  that  the  Spanish  inquisition 
was  abolished  in  1813,  and  that  the  condition  of  that  country  and 
of  Italy  is  due  to  the  free  circulation  of  such  books  as  Kenan's 
Vie  dc  Jesus;  that  heresy  is  a  spiritual  smallpox  which  the  Church 
and  State  have  the  right  to  exclude  by  quarantine  and  suppress 
by  enforced  vaccination ;  that  anarchy  is  political  heresy,  and  that 
the  government — even  of  free  America — is  proceeding  against  that 
by  excluding  anarchists  and  refusing  to  naturalise  them;  that,  if 
that  is  just,  why  can  we  complain  of  a  government  where  ninety- 
five  per  centum  of  its  people  belong  to  one  church — which  is 
established  by  law — for  keeping  out  and  suppressing  heresy  ?  That 
the  laws  against  blasphemy,  profanity  and  Sunday  desecration, 
disguised  under  the  specious  plea  of  police  regulation,  are  really 
anti-heretical  in  their  nature  and  operation.  These  people  might 
cite  as  a  precedent,  Paul's  destruction  of  the  books  of  magic  and 
his  striking  a  sorcerer  with  blindness.  Voltaire  was  the  product  of 
his  time.  He  was  in  the  reaction  against  the  repressive  policy  of 
Catharine  de'Medici  and  Madame  de  Maintenon.  The  former  has 
found  two  able  apologists  in  Lingard  and  Balzac,  but  neither  has 
convinced  the  humble  writer  that  Catharine  de'  Medici  was  not  what 
I  have  always  believed  her — the  worst  woman  that  any  country 
or  any  age  ever  produced.  The  massacre  of  St.  Bartholomew  ad- 
mits of  no  justification,  excuse,  apology  or  explanation.  Madame 
de  Maintenon,  who  persuaded  her  royal  consort  to  murder  and 
dragoon  into  exile  500,000'  of  his  most  loyal  subjects,  has  been 
credited  with  sincere  religious  zeal ;  but  her  private  correspond- 
ence shows  that,  like  the  howling  silversmiths  of  Ephesus,  she 
was  moved  by  material  interest.  This  persecution  which  involved 
the  war  of  the  Cevennes  and  the  revocation  of  the  Edict  of  Nantes 
was  a  State  and  not  a  Church  persecution.  Innocent  XL  dis- 
approved of  it,  but,  not  being  on  good  terms  with  the  French 
King,  he  solicited  the  good  offices  of  James  II.  of  England.  But 
Louis  Quatorze  killed  and  exiled  the  Huguenots  and  thus  got  rid 
of  a  conservative  class  who,  a  century  later,  might  have  saved  the 
head  and  possibly  the  crown  of  the  Baker  and  the  Baker's  wife.  If 
atheism  is  preferable  to  Protestantism,  then  Louis  was  justified 
by  the  result.  Voltaire  was  a  man  of  intense  personal  vanity,  and 
could  never  remain  silent  when  assailed.  His  ecrases  rinfdme, 

*The  number  is  uncertain. — W ,  F.  B, 


NOTES   TO   EPISTLE   DEDICATORY  63 

which  he  uttered  in  his  wrath  and  which  became  his  motto  and 
the  motto  of  the  encyclopaedists,  had  its  birth  in  the  fact  that  he 
was  piqued  at  having  some  of  his  writings  put  under  ecclesiastical 
ban.  He  had,  before  this,  dedicated  his  Mahomet  to  the  Bishop 
of  Rome,  and  the  Pontiff  had  graciously  accepted  the  compliment. 
Voltaire  was  not  by  nature  irreligious.  In  his  The  Sage  and  the 
Atheist  he  shows  a  great  admiration  for  the  Quakers,  and  only 
his  advanced  age  kept  him  from  settling  in  Pennsylvania.  In  his 
historical  works,  written  in  the  middle  age,  he  betrays  little  of 
his  later  declared  opinions;  and  his  account  of  the  Protestant  rev- 
olution is  the  most  truthful  and  impartial  which  I  have  ever  read. 
Macaulay  says  in  his  Essay  on  Frederick  the  Great: 

"Of  all  the  intellectual  weapons  which  have  ever  been  wielded 
by  man,  the  most  terrible  was  the  mockery  of  Voltaire.  .  .  . 
We  can  not  pause  to  recount  how  often  that  rare  talent  was 
exercised  against  rivals  worthy  of  esteem ;  how  often  it  was  used 
to  crush  and  torture  enemies  worthy  only  of  silent  disdain ;  how 
often  it  was  perverted  to  the  more  noxious  purpose  of  destroying 
the  last  solace  of  earthly  misery,  and  the  last  restraint  on  earthly 
power.  Neither  can  we  pause  to  tell  how  often  it  was  used  to 
vindicate  humanity  and  toleration,  'the  principles  of  sound  phil- 
osophy, the  principles  of  free  government." 

The  reader  who  wishes  to  understand  some  of  Macaulay's  al- 
lusions, is  referred  to  the  articles  Calas,  Crebillon  and  Desfon- 
taines  in  any  good  encyclopaedia.  His  statement  that  Satan  is 
Christianity  is  true,  and  true  in  the  sense  in  which  he  meant  it. 
If  there  is  no  Devil,  Christ's  death  on  the  Cross  was  unnecessary, 
and  even  the  existence  of  God  himself  becomes  a  matter  of  boot- 
less academic  speculation.  See  Lucian,  supra. — W.  F.  B. 


INTRODUCTION  65 


INTRODUCTION 

The  main  text  of  this  book  was  written  in  the  form  of 
a  lecture  and  has  been  delivered  many  times.  It  was 
first  delivered  on  the  recommendation  of  George  E.  (now 
Professor)  Condra  of  the  State  University,  at  University 
Place,  January  18,  1903.  Only  slight  and  unimportant 
changes  have  been  made  to  adapt  it  to  this  publication. 
Some  notes  have  been  added  for  elucidation  of  the  text. 

The  theistic  theory  of  the  universe  is  more  than  an 
hypothesis;  it  is  the  only  rational  theory.  The  simple 
fact  that  ice  is  practically  the  only  crystal  which  does  not 
sink  in  water  is  sufficient  evidence  of  design  in  creation. 
Every  tyro  in  physics  knows  the  terrible  consequences 
which  would  follow  if  the  contrary  were  true.  Nature 
is  governed  by  law ;  and  that  law  implies  a  lawgiver  is  a 
truism. 

The  theistic  theory  once  established,  it  is  impossible 
to  conceive  of  a  supreme  god  who  is  not  like  even  Cap- 
itolinian  Jupiter  (Jus- Pater),  the  father  of  justice;  and 
there  is  so  much  of  injustice  in  this  world  that  it  seems 
certain  that  some  time,  somewhere,  somehow — I  know 
not  when  or  where  or  how — there  will  be  a  balance  struck 
between  right  and  wrong.  The  anthropomorphical  ac- 
count of  the  judgment,  given  in  the  twenty-fifth  chapter 
of  St.  Matthew's  Gospel,  is  no  more  literally  true  than 
the  parable  of  the  ten  virgms,  contained  in  the  same 
chapter.  But  judgment  will  come — a  general  judgment — 
and  the  ways  of  God  to  man  will  be  justified. 

Agnosticism  itself  is  the  strongest  argument  for  super- 
natural religion.  No  question  can  equal  in  importance 


66  HISTORICAL  MAN  OF  NAZARETH 

man's  relation  to  his  creator.    A  century  and  a  half  ago 
Voltaire  wrote: 

"What  am  I  ?    \Vhence  have  come ?  and  whither  go? 
This  men  still  ask,  and  this  can  never  know." 

This  briefly  expresses  the  credo  of  every  modern  agnostic, 
and  it  is  doubtful  if  in  the  search  for  truth  of  such  earnest 
souls  among  the  ancients  as  Sokrates  and  Cicero  a  more 
satisfactory  result  was  reached.  What  stronger  proof 
need  we  of  the  necessity  of  a  supernatural  revelation? 
Would  a  just  and  merciful  God  leave  his  children  in  the 
dark  without  a  guide?  Whether  this  guide  be  an  in- 
fallible book  or  an  infallible  church,  is  a  dispute  between 
Augsburg  and  Rome  and  will  not  be  here  discussed. 
Both  Augsburg  and  Rome  accept  the  Bible  as  the  word 
of  God. 

"We  are  living  in  an  age  of  transition,"'  say  the  apolo- 
gists for  destructive  criticism,  but  the  truth  is  there  is 
nothing  new  under  the  sun.  Even.'  poison  heresy  of  this 
age  has  its  prototype  in  the  ages  that  are  passed.  Lucian 
was  but  the  Voltaire  of  paganism ;  Heraklitus  of  Ephesus 
was  the  Buchner  of  his  age;  Protagoras  differed  but 
little  from  Herbert  Spencer;  Celsus  wrote  like  a  modern 
agnostic ;  M inot  J.  Savage  stole  his  thunder  from  Bishop 
Colenso,  who,  in  turn,  took  his  cue  from  Richard  Simon1 ; 
and  Washington  Gladden  is  but  the  parrot  repeating  the 
stale  and  exploded  criticisms  of  Porphyry  and  Theodore 
of  Mopsuestia. 

That  Alexander  read  the  prophecies  concerning  him- 
self in  the  temple  at  Jerusalem,  is  as  well-established  as 
any  fact  in  the  life  of  the  Macedonian.  It  is  related  by 
the  nearest  extant  historian  to  Alexander's  time  and  is 


'Richard  Simon  does  not  belong  with  the  destructive  critics. — 
W.  F.  B. 


INTRODUCTION  6? 

confirmed  by  the  fact  that  some  strong  influence  operated 
to  prevent  Alexander  from  accepting  the  advice  of  Par- 
menion  to  divide  the  empire  with  Darius.1  But  a  few  of 
the  savants  of  cyclopaedias  and  magazines  jumped  at  a 
few  Greek  words  appearing  in  the  text  of  the  Book  of 
Daniel  like  a  black  bass  at  a  minnow.  Alas,  for  the  in- 
tellectual indolence  of  the  age!  Men  and  women  who 
will  read  the  superficial  outpourings  of  flippant  miscalled 
critics  have  never  looked  within  the  pages  of  Origen  and 
Pusey.  There  is  absolutely  no  reason  for  assigning  the 
Book  of  Daniel  to  the  age  of  Antiochus  Epiphanes.  The 
few  Greek  words  which  appear  in  the  text  are  the  names 
of  certain  musical  instruments  and  prove  nothing,  except 
the  strong  probability  that  the  instruments  were  received 
from  the  Greeks  and  brought  their  names  with  them,  as 
we  of  the  West  have  received  "maverick,"  "corral,"  and 
"ranch"  from  our  Texan  and  Spanish-American  neigh- 
bors. In  both  cases  commerce  transmitted  nomenclature. 
Our  friend  Doctor  Draper  tells  us,  in  substance,  that 
the  pyramids  stood  as  long  before  the  time  of  Jacob  as 
Christ  lived  before  Draper  wrote  his  Intellectual  Devel- 
opment of  Europe,  and  that  the  hieroglyphics  inscribed 
thereon  bespeak  a  long  development  of  the  art  of  writing. 
But  his  syllogism  rests  upon  a  false  premise — the  as- 
sumption of  the  correctness  of  the  chronology  of  the  Arch- 
bishop of  Armagh.  Because  Usher  was  the  political  pet 
of  that  royal  pedant,  James  Stuart,  his  chronology  was 
placed  in  the  margin  of  the  English  Bible,  but  it  is  no 
more  a  part  of  the  Bible  than  is  the  table  of  contents 
placed  at  the  head  of  a  chapter.  John  Denison  Baldwin 
says: 

'This  message  from  Darius  came  before  the  visit  to  Jerusalem  — 
W.  F.  B. 


68  HISTORICAL  MAN  OF  NAZARETH 

Any  system  of  chronology  that  places  the  creation  of  man  only 
about  four  thousand  or  five  thousand  years  previous  to  the  birth 
of  Christ  is  a  mere  scholastic  fancy,  an  elaborate  absurdity.  There 
is  nothing  to  warrant  it  and  not  much  to  excuse  it  Those  who 
profess  to  find  it  in  the  Bible  misuse  and  falsify  that  book."1 

And  now  come  the  critics  of  the  New  Testament  to 
inform  us  that  the  Gospels  were  written  two  or  three 
centuries  after  Christ,  that  most  of  the  epistles  were  not 
written  by  the  persons  to  whom  they  were  ascribed  and 
that  the  Apocalypse  or  Revelation  of  John  has  no  place 
in  the  canon.  Irenaeus,  Bishop  of  Lyons,  wrote  an  elab- 
orate work  against  heresy  about  A.D.  180.  In  this  book, 
he  speaks  of  the  four  Gospels  as  a  modern  geographer 
might  speak  of  the  four  continents,  Europe,  Asia,  Africa 
and  America.  Irenaeus  was  born  in  Asia  Minor  and 
remembered  and  had  associated  with  Polycarp,  a  disciple 
of  the  Apostle  John.  This  bishop  tells  us  that  Matthew 
published  "a  written  Gospel  among  the  Hebrews  in  their 
own  language/'  that  Mark,  Peter's  disciple  and  inter- 
preter, "did  himself  also  publish  unto  us  in  writing  the 
things  which  were  preached  by  Peter";  that  Luke,  too, 
the  attendant  of  Paul,  "set  down  in  a  book  the  gospel 
preached  by  him" ;  that  John  put  forth  his  Gospel  "while 
he  abode  in  Ephesus  in  Asia,"  and  Irenaeus  informs  us 
that  John  did  not  die  until  after  the  accession  of  Trajan, 
A.D.  98.  Polycarp  was  burned  A.D.  169  and  Irenaetis 
was  at  least  nineteen  years  old  at  the  death  of  Polycarp. 
Of  the  integrity  of  his  statements  there  can  be  no  ques- 
tion. But  the  Gospels  contain  internal  evidence  of  their 
own  authenticity.  Matthew's  Gospel  was  certainly  writ- 
ten before  the  destruction  of  Jerusalem,  September,  A.D. 
70.  Read  the  twenty-fourth  and  twenty-fifth  chapters  of 

1  Prehistoric  Natifms,  pp.  26,  27. 


INTRODUCTION  69 

Matthew,  remembering  the  Jew  looked  upon  Jerusalem 
as  the  Roman  regarded  Rome,  as  an  eternal  city  ;  and  our 
Saviour  speaks  to  his  disciples  apparently  with  this  as- 
sumption. The  event  showed  that  the  assumption  was 
not  verified  in  the  sense  in  which  the  Jews  understood  it. 
Now,  a  counterfeiter,  writing  at  a  later  date,  would  not 
have  failed  to  offer  some  explanation  such  as  is  offered 
in  John,  second  chapter,  twenty-first  verse.  The  writers 
of  the  Gospels  were  familiar  with  the  geography  of  Pal- 
estine, the  customs  of  the  Jews  and  the  language  of 
Judea;  such  knowledge  as  they  possessed  could  hardly 
have  been  acquired  by  men  who  were  not  to  the  manner 
born.1 

2.  The  genuineness  of  the  epistles  of  Paul  and  the  Acts 
are  proved  to  a  moral  certainty   (hardly  less  than  the 
demonstration  of  a   proposition   of   Euclid)    in   Paley's 
Horae  Paulinae.     This  book,  read  by  few  and  almost 
forgotten,  puts  this  question  beyond  all  doubt.     Indeed, 
the  authenticity  and  genuiness  of  the  Acts  of  the  Apostles 
is  better  established  than  the  genuineness  and  authenticity 
of  Caesar's  Commentaries,  and  this  by  evidence  internal 
and  external. 

3.  The  Apocalypse  or  Revelation  of  John  was  certainly 
written  by  some  person  upon  the  Isle  of  Patmos.     The 
writer's  figures  are  taken  from  surrounding  geographical 
objects,  and  the  hail  mentioned  in  xvi,  21,  "every  stone 
about  the  weight  of  a  talent,"  was,  probably,  suggested 
by  the  volcanic  stones  hurled  from  a  neighboring  island 
upon  Patmos  at  the  time  of  a  great  earthquake  which 
took  place  here  in  the  reign  of  Domitian  and  at  the  prob- 
able time  of  John's  banishment.     In  the  writer's  humble 
judgment,  controversialists  have  been  at  fault  in  regard 


reader  is  referred  to  Lardner.  Credibility  of  the  Gospels, 
a  book  which  never  was  and  never  can  be  answered.  —  W  .  F.  B. 


7O  HISTORICAL  MAN  OF  NAZARETH 

to  this  book.  Like  some  critics  who  have  sought  for 
everything  in  Shakspere,  these  speculative  exegetists  have 
interpreted  the  number  of  the  beast  into  everything  from 
the  Bishop  of  Rome  to  Martin  Luther.  It  seems  plain 
to  the  present  writer  that  Caesar  Nero  was  meant  and 
none  other.  The  Scarlet  Woman  was  clearly  Pagan  Rome. 
Most  of  the  figures  relate  to  things  past  and  present,  and 
very  little  of  it  is  prophecy.1 

There  is  room  for  a  very  interesting  work  on  the  "Acci- 
dents of  History."  One  of  the  most  important  personages 
in  the  last  century  of  American  history  was  a  jury 
lawyer  unknown  to  fame  until  he  delivered  a  nominating 
speech  at  a  national  convention.  The  choice  for  this  task 
was  because  of  his  living  distant  from  the  candidate  whom 
he  nominated.  This  candidate  failed  of  nomination,  but 
the  nominator  was  placed  in  the  field  as  a  campaign  orator 
in  the  interest  of  the  successful  candidate.  Prior  to  all 
this,  this  lawyer  had  published  certain  atheistical  tracts 
entitled  "Ghosts,"  "Gods,"  etc.  And  the  political  opposi- 
tion reprinted  these  tracts  and  circulated  them  wherever 
the  aforesaid  orator  was  assigned  to  speak.  His  fame 
spread  abroad  throughout  the  land,  and  for  the  next 
twenty-three  years  of  his  life,  1876-1899,  he  spoke  to 
crowded  houses  and  gathered  in  shekels  galore.  In  a 
material  sense,  his  life  was  success.  But  its  influence 
has  been  pernicious.  It  is  a  sad  commentary  upon  the 
superficiality  of  our  countrymen  that  such  a  man,  with- 
out learning  or  philosophical  training,  by  force  of  his 
coarse  and  flippant  wit,  could  have  produced  such  a 
change  as  has  been  produced  in  this  country  in  the  last 

1From  chapter  I.,  verse  1,  it  would  seem  that  the  book  is 
prophetic,  as  doubtless  portions  of  it  are.  The  writer  is  not  so 
presumptuous  as  to  attempt  the  interpretation  of  this  book. — W. 
F.  B. 


INTRODUCTION  71 

generation.  But  all  this  is  easily  explained.  This  man 
succeeded  not  by  his  own  strength,  but  by  the  weakness 
of  his  adversaries.  The  vicious  practice  of  exempting 
church  property  from  taxation  has  filled  the  land  with 
churches;  and  the  almost  equally  vicious  practice  of  the 
gratuitous  education  of  clergymen  has  supplied  these 
churches  with  men  of  inferior  ability  and  attainments. 
Cheap  comedians  and  sensational  actors1  have  taken  to 
the  pulpit  instead  of  the  stage.  The  man  from  Peoria 
might  be  fitly  compared  to  the  doughty  Don  of  La  Mancha 
charging  a  flock  of  sheep.  The  shepherds  attacked  him 
with  their  slings ;  he  came  out  slightly  disfigured,  but  still 
in  the  ring.  Some  of  his  assailants  were  able  men,  but 
the  result  was  little  more  than  a  free  advertisement. 

The  opposition  of  science,  falsely  so-called,  has  been 
sufficiently  treated  in  the  discourse  which  follows  this 
introduction. 

We  are  told  that  Christianity  is  a  failure  because  it  has 
not  made  a  conquest  of  the  world.  It  somtimes  seems  a 
matter  of  regret  that  the  Abrahamic  Aera  used  by 
Eusebius  was  not  adopted  and  retained  by  the  Arabians, 
Jews,  and  all  Christians.  It  might  have  served  as  a 
common  bond  of  union.  Three  thousand  eight  hundred 
twenty-seven  years  ago  this  great  man  left  the  polytheistic 
civilisation  of  Chaldea  that,  withdrawing  from  pagan  con- 
tact, he  might  preserve  uncorrupted  in  his  own  family 
and  descendants  the  primitive  belief  in  one  God.  The 
Abrahamic  religions — Christian,  Jew  and  Mohammedan 
— now  embrace  a  substantial  majority  of  the  human  race. 
God  never  revealed  the  whole  truth  to  Abraham.  His 
idea  of  the  Almighty  was  anthropomorphic,  and  it  is 


^or  example,  T.   DeWitt  Talmage  and  his  protege,   Samuel 
Porter  Jones.  —IV.  F.  B. 


72 

doubtful  if  he  had  any  conception  of  a  future  state.  All 
of  his  followers  are  monotheists,  but,  like  their  great 
father,  all  of  them  do  not  possess  the  whole  truth.  In 
this  respect,  a  comparison  may  be  drawn  from  the  light 
of  the  sun  falling  upon  the  earth.  In  the  central  zone 
the  vertical  rays  fall;  in  the  temperate  zones  there  is  a 
deflection,  till  we  reach  the  frigid  zones,  where  dwells 
the  darkness  of  unbelief.  A  short  arctic  summer  reveals 
the  light  of  truth,  but  invincible  ignorance  conquers,  and 
fetichism  and  atheism  settle  down  upon  those  unhappy 
men  for  whom  repentance  was  not  appointed.  As  one 
reflects  how  the  spiritual  children  of  Abraham  have  mis- 
understood and  slaughtered  one  another,  he  is  reminded 
of  the  Big-endian  war  in  Gulliver's  Travels. 

In  the  latter  half  of  the  sixteenth  century,  there  lived 
in  a  forest  near  Paris  a  witch,  weird  as  the  woman  of 
Endor  or  one  of  the  hags  who  met  Macbeth  upon  the 
heath.  One  night  a  fierce  storm  arose.  The  huge  trees 
about  the  hovel  moaned  like  the  prophetic  oaks  of 
Dodona;  the  prone-descending  rain  beat  against  the  side 
of  the  hut  and  trickled  from  the  thatched  roof.  The 
feeble  rush  light  flickered  and  flickered — the  plaything  of 
the  tempest.  Anon,  a  loud  knock  was  heard  at  the  door, 
and  the  hag  opened  it  for  a  youth  whose  dress  showed 
him  to  be  of  noble  blood;  his  name  was  Henry.  The 
woman  sat  before  him  a  simple  meal  of  black  bread, 
cheese  and  spring  water.  Another  knock  and  another 
Henry  entered,  also  of  noble  blood.  Another  knock  and 
a  third  Henry  entered,  he,  also,  of  noble  blood.  Hunting 
in  the  forest,  they  had  all  been  overtaken  by  the  storm 
and  had  sought  refuge  here.  "To  whom  does  this  repast 
belong?"  cried  one.  "To  me/'  said  the  first,  "because  I 
came  first."  "To  me,"  said  the  second,  "because  I  am  the 


INTRODUCTION  73 

oldest."  "To  the  one  who  can  best  defend  it,"  said  the 
third.  All  assented,  and  drawing  their  swords  fought  like 
gladiators  till  the  water  was  spilled,  the  bread  and  cheese 
trampled  in  under  foot,  and  the  floor  of  the  hut  bathed 
in  the  blood  of  the  combatants.  Each  of  the  young  men 
burst  into  a  loud  laugh.  But  the  woman  fixed  her  evil 
eye  upon  them : 

"As  you  have  met  in  this  place,  so  shall  you  be  united  in  one 
common  fate;  as  you  have  deluged  this  hut  with  blood,  so  shall 
you  deluge  France ;  and  as  you  have  trampled  under  foot  this 
repast  which  hospitality  prepared,  so  shall  you  abuse  and  lose  that 
power  which  you  might  have  shared." 

These  young  men  were  Henry  de  Guise,  assassinated 
by  the  order  of  the  king  December  23,  1588;  Henry  de 
Valois,  assassinated  by  James  Clement,  August  5,  1589; 
Henry  de  Bourbon,  assassinated  by  Ravaillac,  May  14, 
1610.  This  tale  carries  its  own  moral.  Believers  in 
supernatural  religion  can  be  a  unit  against  the  common 
enemy,  without  the  surrender  of  any  essential  principle. 

This  little  book  does  not  purport  to  be  a  life  of  Jesus 
Christ.  Go  to  Farrar  and  Fouard  for  that.  But  I  can  not 
close  this  introduction  without  calling  attention  to  a  book 
published  three  years  ago  by  Dodd,  Mead  and  Company, 
New  York,  The  Trial  of  Jesus  by  Giovanni  Rosadi.  (This 
is  the  book  from  which  most  of  the  popular  lectures  on 
"the  trial  of  Jesus"  have  been  cribbed.)  Every  man, 
woman,  and  child,  but  certainly  every  lawyer,  should  read 
this  book.  The  prefatory  introduction  is  particularly  grat- 
ifying for  its  onslaught  upon  criticism  which  is  not  high 
and  upon  height  which  is  not  criticism.  . 

In  the  discourse  which  follows,  search  not  for  plagiar- 
ism of  thought  or  word.  "There  is  nothing  new  under 
the  sun."  Forget  the  writer.  If  this  little  work  has 


74  HISTORICAL  MAN  OF  NAZARETH 

caused  you  to  turn  your  eyes  upon  the  subject  of  this 
discourse,  he  is  content. 

W.  F.  B. 
Hartington,  Nebraska,  November  25,  1907. 


HISTORICAL  MAN  OF  NAZARETH  75 


THE  HISTORICAL  MAN  OF  NAZARETH 

'If  they  hear  not  Moses  and  the  prophets,  neither  wi1!  they 
believe  if  one  rise  again  from  the  dead." 

— Luke,  xvi.,  31 — Douai  Version. 

The  story  of  the  rich  man  and  Lazarus  is  familiar  to 
every  school  boy.  I  shall  waste  no  time  in  the  bootless 
speculation  as  to  whether  this  story  is  a  parable  or  some- 
thing else.  In  either  event,  to  my  mind,  it  conveys  the 
same  truth. 

The  Master  tells  us  there  was  a  certain  rich  man  who 
fared  sumptuously  every  day;  that  a  certain  beggar  lay 
at  his  gate  covered  with  sores.  His  food  was  the  crumbs 
that  fell  from  the  rich  man's  table ;  his  only  nurses,  the 
dogs  that  licked  his  sores.  The  beggar  died  and  was 
carried  by  angels  to  Abraham's  bosom.  The  rich  man 
died  and  was  buried,  and  in  Hell  lifted  his  eyes,  being  in 
torment;  and  seeing  Abraham  afar  off  and  Lazarus  in 
his  bosom,  he  asks  the  Father  of  the  Faithful  to  send 
Lazarus  that  he  may  dip  the  tip  of  his  finger  in  water 
and  touch  it  to  his  parched  tongue.  But  this  poor  boon 
is  denied  the  wretch.  Lost  though  he  is  to  all  hope,  nat- 
ural affection  still  remained.  The  sequel  shows  that  the 
retention  of  this  instinct  only  made  his  torment  the  more 
terrible.  He  entreats  Abraham  to  send  Lazarus  to  his 
father's  house  that  this  messenger  from  the  dead  may 
warn  his  five  brethren  that  they  come  not  to  this  place  of 
torment.  Abraham  replies  that  his  brethren  have  Moses 
and  the  prophets.  The  lost  one  cries  out  with  the  energy 
and  agony  of  despair: 

"Nay,  but  if  one  went  unto  them  from  the  dead,  they  will 
repent." 


76  HISTORICAL  MAN  OF  NAZARETH 

How  must  Abraham's  answer  have  sounded  to  the 
condemned  man? 

"If  they  hear  not  Moses  and  the  prophets,  neither  will  they 
believe  if  one  rise  again  from  the  dead." 

The  mental  experience  of  all  men  is  nearly  the  same. 
In  words  of  the  poet : 

"The  thoughts  we  are  thinking  our  fathers  did  think." 

Probably  each  person  has  said  within  himself :  ''Could 
I  have  seen  the  miraculous  drought  of  fishes ;  could  I  have 
seen  water  changed  to  wine ;  could  I  have  seen  Jesus  walk 
on  the  sea  of  Tiberias,  heal  the  leper,  feed  the  multitude, 
or  raise  the  widow's  dead  son  to  life,  I  would  then  be 
troubled  with  no  doubts." 

It  will  be  my  purpose  to  show  that  we  of  this  age  have 
more  evidence  of  the  divinity  of  Christ  than  did  his 
contemporaries. 

In  the  outset,  let  me  honestly  state  the  alternative :  you 
must  believe  all  that  was  ever  claimed  for  Jesus  Christ 
by  the  most  sanguine  believer  and  all  that  Jesus  Christ 
taught,  or  you  must  believe  him  a  worse  impostor  than 
Joe  Smith,  the  Mormon  prophet.  Now,  what  is  claimed 
for  Jesus?  The  most  intimate  friend  he  had  on  earth 
wrote  concerning  him: 

"In  the  beginning  was  the  Word  and  the  Word  was  with  God, 
and  the  Word  was  God.  The  same  was  in  the  beginning  with 
God.  All  things  were  made  by  him;  and  without  him  was  not 
anything  made  that  was  made." 

Jerome's  rendering  of  the  first  four  words  of  John's 
Gospel  should  be  contrasted  with  this  rendering  of  the 
first  seven  words  of  Genesis,  in  order  to  get  their  true 
significance. 

"In  principle  erat  verbum" — "In  the  beginning  was  the  Word." 


HISTORICAL  MAN  OF  NAZARETH  77 

"In  principio  Deus  creavit  coelum  et  terrain" — "In  the  begin- 
ning God  created  the  heavens  and  the  earth." 

There  is  a  maxim  of  lawyers: 

"Contemporanea  expositio  est  optima  et  fortissimo  in  lege" — 
"A  contemporary  exposition  is  the  best  and  strongest  in  law." 

In  construing  any  writing  the  circumstances  under 
which  it  was  written  are  the  strongest  evidence.  It  is  a 
matter  of  history  that  John  wrote  his  Gospel  to  refute  the 
Cerinthians,  who  claimed  that  Christ  was  a  created  being 
— simply  a  virtuous  man. 

"In  the  beginning  zvas  the  Word ;  and  the  Word  was  with  God ; 
and  the  Word  was  God;  the  same  was  in  the  beginning  with  God. 
By  him  were  all  things  made;  and  without  him  was  not  anything 
made  that  was  made." 

A  lawyer  in  drawing  a  bond  could  not  use  stronger 
language  than  John  uses: 

This  is  what  is  claimed  for  Jesus.  His  most  intimate 
friend  could  hardly  have  been  mistaken  in  what  Jesus 
claimed  for  himself;  and  he  testified  his  sincere  belief  in 
that  claim  by  facing  death  in  the  boiling  cauldron. 

Now,  what  did  Jesus  teach?  The  New  Testament  is 
the  best  commentary  upon  the  Old;  and  Jesus  Christ  is 
the  best  commentator.  He  puts  the  seal  of  his  approval 
on  the  Old  Testament  when  he  says,  "I  come  not  to  de- 
stroy, but  to  fulfil."  He  verifies  his  resurrection  by  the 
miracle  of  Jonah1  and  the  whale.  He  verifies  his  coming 
to  judge  the  world  by  the  Noachin  Deluge.  It  is  the 
rankest  nonsense  to  say  that  he  referred  to  those  events 
as  anything  but  historical  facts.  Imagine  the  greatest 

Unbelievers  and  destructive  critics  have  made  themselves 
merry  at  the  expense  of  this  prophet.  The  story,  though  remark- 
able, is  hardly  a  miracle,  if  we  accept  Pascal's  definition  of  the 
word.  I  would  refer  any  inquiring  mind  to  dissertation  on  Jonah 
and  Paul  at  end  of  volume.— W.  F.  B. 


78  HISTORICAL  MAN  OF  NAZARETH 

Teacher  the  world  ever  saw  stultifying  Himself  with  ex- 
pressions like  these:  "As  it  was  in  the  days  of  Sinbad 
the  Sailor  so  shall  it  be  in  my  day."  That  is  to  say,  "Sin- 
bad  lied  and  I  am  lying,  too."  "A  wicked  and  adulterous 
generation  seeketh  for  a  sign;  but  there  shall  no  sign  be 
given  them,  but  the  sign  of  Baron  Munchausen.  I  will 
prove  by  the  Prince  of  all  Liars  that  I  am  telling  the 
truth." 

Further,  Jesus  taught  that  a  certain  portion  of  the 
human  race  would  be  eternally  damned.  "These  shall  go 
away  into  aionion  punishment,  but  the  just  into  life 
aionion."  Oh !  how  many  of  these  half-breed  Christians — 
neither  fish  nor  fowl — I  have  heard  get  up  and  display 
their  little  smattering  of  Greek  by  expatiating  on  that 
word  aionion.  "Why,"  they  say,  "it  does  not  necessarily 
mean  eternal."  Bless  their  lilliputian  intellects !  Of  course 
it  does  not;  and  no  Greek  scholar  ever  claimed  it  did. 
I  can  find  things  in  the  Bible  described  as  aionion  that 
did  not  last  as  long  as  I  have  lived.  But,  can  you  believe, 
without  doing  violence  to  every  rational  rule  of  construc- 
tion, that  Jesus  Christ  used  that  word  twice  in  one  sen- 
tence, and  meant  one  thing  in  one  use  and  another  thing 
in  the  other  use?  If  so,  your  credulity  is  greater  than 
mine.  If  the  punishment  of  the  reprobate  is  not  eternal, 
the  reward  of  the  just  is  not. 

To  sum  up :  you  must  either  believe  that  Jesus  was  God, 
the  Creator  of  all  things;  you  must  accept  as  true  the 
doctrines  and  miracles  of  the  Old  Testament  and  the  doc- 
trine of  eternal  reprobation ;  or  you  must  condemn  Him 
as  an  impostor. 

If  Jesus  Christ  was  an  impostor,  he  was  a  most  peculiar 
one.  Joseph  Smith,  Brigham  Young,  Alexander  Dowie. 
and  every  other  fake,  have  followed  imposture  for  what 
there  is  in  it ;  and  have  found  it  profitable.  Jesus  lived  a 


HISTORICAL  MAN  OF  NAZARETH  7Q 

life  of  toil,  suffering  and  self-denial.  At  the  time  of  his 
death  he  probably  did  not  have  to  exceed  120  followers. 
He  predicted  his  own  fate  and  suffered  death  by  the 
ignominious  method  of  execution  reserved  for  Roman 
deserters  and  runaway  slaves.  Is  not  the  hypothesis  that 
he  was  an  impostor  contrary  to  all  human  experience? 
I  might  stop  right  here  with  a  case  made  out ;  but  I  have 
set  out  to  prove  this  matter  to  a  demonstration ;  and  shall 
be  as  good  as  my  word.  There  will  be  no  begging  of  the 
question ;  nothing  will  be  assumed  in  my  premises  as  to 
the  divine  or  even  supernatural  nature  of  Jesus.  That 
he  had  an  historical  existence  may  be  assumed  as  an  ad- 
mitted fact.  A  quarter  of  a  century  ago  there  were  those 
who  even  denied  this ;  but  they  have  gone  into  the  limbo 
of  oblivion,  along  with  those  who  claimed  that  the  monks 
of  the  middle  ages  wrote  the  Aeneid  of  Vergil1,  where 
they  will  soon  be  followed  by  the  ingenious  people  who 
claim  that  Bacon  wrote  the  Shaksperean  dramas.2  These 
facts  can  be  gathered  from  profane  writers  and  will  be 
generally  accepted : 

About  1900  years  ago  (the  exact  date  can  not  be  fixed 
nearer  than  six  years3)  there  was  born  somewhere  in 
Palestine  a  Jewish  peasant,  who  had  reached  mature  age 
when  he  began  to  preach  a  new  and  singularly  pure  doc- 
trine. He  was  reported  by  enemies,  as  well  as  by  his 
friends,  to  have  performed  prodigies — all  of  these  in  the 
line  of  doing  good — none  of  them  descending  to  the 
vulgar  level  of  the  juggler  or  magician.  At  the  end  of  a 
short  ministry,  he  was,  on  the  indictment  of  the  Jewish 


'See  note  1,  p.  104. 
2  See  note  2,  p.  104. 

'Perhaps  not  nearer  than  eight — between  B.C.  6  and  A.D.  2. 
His  age  at  his  death  was  between  thirty-one  and  forty-one  years. 


8O  HISTORICAL  MAN  OF  NAZARETH 

Synedrium,1  crucified  by  the  order  of  the  Roman  pro- 
curator, Pontius  Pilate.  The  career  of  this  man,  thus 
briefly  summarised,  has  been  ignored  or  passed  over 
lightly  by  contemporary  historians. 

Josephus  was  born  at  Jerusalem,  probably  eight  years 
after  the  death  of  Christ.  It  is  almost  certain  that  his 
immediate  ancestors  were  engaged  in  compassing  that 
death.  In  Josephus'  history  of  the  Jewish  wars,  there 
is  a  passage  which  expresses  a  half-belief  in  the  divinity 
of  Christ.  This  passage  is  found,  exactly  as  it  reads  in 
our  copies,  in  the  oldest  extant  copy  of  Josephus  —  the 
one  in  the  monastery  on  Mount  Sinai.  Yet,  I  am  in- 
clined to  the  belief  that,  if  it  is  not  altogether  spurious, 
it  does  not  appear  in  the  exact  form  in  which  it  was 
written  by  the  Jewish  historian.  It  is  very  improbable 
that  the  man  who,  as  we  believe,  went  to  Rome  and  in- 
stigated Nero,  through  his  Jewish  wife,  Poppaea,  to  per- 
secute the  Christians,  ever  wrote  these  words  concerning 
the  founder  of  Christianity :  "Now,  there  was  about  this 
time,  Jesus,  a  wise  man,  if  it  be  lawful  to  call  him  a 
man."2  Tacitus,  who  was  eight  years  old  and  lived  in 
Rome  at  the  death  of  St.  Paul,  passes  over  the  career  of 
Jesus  with  a  single  dash  of  the  pen.  Speaking  of  the 
Christians,  he  says :  "Auctor  nominis  ejus  Christtis,  qui, 
Tiberio  impcrante,  per  procuratorem  Pontium  Pilatum 
supplicio  affectns  erat." — "The  originator  of  this  name 
was  one  Christ,  who,  Tiberius  being  emperor,  by  the  pro- 

*It  is  claimed  by  certain  Jewish  writers  that  there  was  no 
Synedrium  or  Gerusia  at  the  time  Jesus  was  condemned,  it  having 
been  abolished  by  Herod  B.C.  37,  and  not  restored  (by  Agrippa) 
till  A.D.  41.  There  appears  to  be  Talmudic  authority  for  this 
statement,  bui  Josephus,  who  shows  no  desire  to  spare  Herod,  is 
silent  as  to  the  abolition  of  the  Synedrium.  Pontius  Pilate  was 
deposed  by  Vitellius,  proconsul  of  Syria,  A.D.  36.  Jesus  must 
have  been  crucified  before  that  date. — W.  F.  B. 

*  See  note  3,  p.  104. 


HISTORICAL  MAN  OF  NAZARETH  8l 

curator  Pontius  Pilate,  suffered  death."  There  can  be  no 
doubt  of  this  passage;  even  Gibbon  concedes  it.  Sixty- 
five  years  after  the  death  of  Jesus  Christ,  Pliny,  proconsul 
of  Bythinia,  is  writing  to  the  emperor  Trajan,  trying  to 
explain  who  these  Christians  are.  Yet  this  earthly  life  of 
Jesus  Christ,  almost  ignored  by  the  wise  man  of  his  day, 
taken  as  an  entirety,  is  the  greatest  event  that  ever  hap- 
pened or  ever  can  happen  in  the  history  of  the  human 
race.  The  history  of  civilisation  before  Christ  was  a  prep- 
aration for  his  coming.  The  history  since  that  time  has 
been  its  sequence. 

More  than  fourteen  centuries  before  Jesus  was  born 
at  Bethlehem  of  Judea,  Balaam,  the  son  of  Beor,  uttered 
his  prophecy  which,  in  my  humble  judgment,  is  the 
sublimest  poetry  in  the  Bible  outside  the  Book  of  Job. 

"And  there  shall  come  a  star  out  of  Jacob,  and  a  sceptre  shall 
rise  out  of  Israel." 

The  tradition  of  this  prophecy,  says  Origen,  was  pre- 
served among  the  Gentiles.  We  even  read  in  Confucius 
of  a  wise  man  who  would  arise  in  the  West.  In  Xeno- 
phon's  Memorabilia,  we  learn  that  such  a  teacher  was 
predicted  by  Sokrates,  one  who  would  teach  the  ultimate 
truth.  And  when  we  read  in  St.  Matthew's  Gospel  of  the 
wise  men  coming  from  the  East  and  inquiring:  "Where 
is  he  that  is  born  King  of  the  Jews?  For  we  have  seen 
his  star  in  the  East  and  are  come  to  worship  him,"  it 
seems  like  a  green  shoot  sprouting  from  a  grain  of  corn 
taken  from  the  sarcophagus  of  a  mummy  three  thousand 
years  old,1 

But  I  had  forgotten  to  mention,  what  you  already  know, 
that  there  are  men  who  deny  the  supernatural  character 

tThis  figure  was  used  by  Bishop  Hare,  of  the  Protestant 
Episcopal  Church,  in  a  sermon  preached  at  Niobrara,  Nebraska, 
Eve  of  Epiphany,  1879.— W.  F.  B. 


82  HISTORICAL  MAN  OF  NAZARETH 

of  the  Old  Testament.  They  say  that  the  Pentateuch  and 
the  greater  part  of  the  Old  Testament  were  written  during 
the  seventy-years  captivity.  They  forget  that  proving  that 
Ezra  wrote  the  five  books  attributed  to  Moses  could  not, 
in  the  least,  affect  the  question  of  divine  inspiration.  The 
Holy  Ghost  could  inspire  Ezra  as  well  as  Moses.  The 
question  is  not  who  wrote  the  book,  but  did  the  Holy 
Ghost  inspire  the  writer?  I  presume  it  is  quite  unneces- 
sary for  me  to  say  that  I  believe  Moses  wrote  the  Penta- 
teuch, except  the  account  of  his  own  death. 

If  Ezra  wrote  the  Pentateuch,  he  wrote  the  Decalogue. 
Where  did  he  get  that  law  ?  A  Jewish  captive  in  a  land 
where  the  national  religion  required  every  woman,  at 
least  once  in  her  lifetime,  to  offer  her  chastity  in  the 
temple  of  the  Goddess  of  Love.1  A  land  that  did  not  have 
a  chaste  woman  in  it — if  in  such  a  land  Ezra  wrote  the 
command,  "Thou  shalt  not  commit  adultery,"  where,  I 
repeat,  did  Ezra  get  that  law  ?  But  we  can  not  devote  too 
much  time  to  these  people ;  life  is  too  short. 

The  name  of  Alexander  of  Macedon  should  never  be 
spoken  in  terms  of  praise.  He  deserves  to  be  classed  with 
Atilla  and  Jenghis  Khan2  rather  than  Hannibal  and  Gus- 
taf  Adolf.  He  was  an  ancestor  worthy  of  the  freebooters 
who  captured  Miss  Stone.  Yet  Alexander  was  the  path- 
finder of  Christianity.  His  conquest  spread  the  Greek 
language  as  a  medium  for  the  transmission  of  the  Gospel. 
The  Roman  with  his  good  roads  and  religious  indiffer- 
entism  was  another  preparation  for  the  coming  Messiah. 

The  Resurrection  of  Christ  is  the  miracle  of  miracles. 
Prove  this,  and  you  have  established  the  truth  of  Chris- 
tianity. There  is  better  proof  of  the  Resurrection  of  Jesus 

1  See  note  4,  p.  105. 

'This  is  perhaps  too  severe.  Voltaire  says  that  Alexander  built 
more  cities  than  he  destroyed. — W.  F.  B, 


HISTORICAL  MAN   OF  NAZARETH  83 

Christ  than  there  is  of  the  battle  of  Thermopylae.  Three 
hundred  Spartans  withstood  five  million  Persians  at  the 
pass  between  Mount  Aeta  and  the  Malian  Gulf.  When 
299  of  the  300  had  perished,  the  bodies  of  20,000  Persians 
lay  slain  about  them.1  The  story  is  improbable.  The 
only  original  authority  for  this  story  is  the  Greek  his- 
torian, Herodotos,  who  was  four  years  old  when  the  event 
took  place,  and  was  not  an  eye-witness.  Yet  nobody  ever 
doubts  Thermopylae  as  an  historical  fact. 

A  man  is  crucified.  His  heart,  or  at  least  the  pericar- 
dium, is  pierced  with  a  lance;  he  is  buried;  in  thirty-six 
hours  he  rises  from  the  dead.  We  have  two  witnesses, 
Matthew  and  John,  who  testify  to  this  from  personal 
knowledge.  But  you  say  that  this  thing  is  more  improb- 
able than  Herodotos'  account  of  Thermopylae :  the  ac- 
count of  the  Resurrection  is  unaccountable,  contrary  to 
all  human  experience,  and  so  forth.  There  are  many 
things  that  are  unaccountable.  Place  ice  at  32  degrees 
Fahrenheit  over  a  fire,  and  this  water  will  absorb  142.65 
degrees  of  heat  without  raising  its  temperature  before  it 
melts ;  is  not  this  unaccountable  ?  We  have  hypotheses 
galore,  from  Black's  theory  of  quasi-chemical  combina- 
tion to  the  modern  theory  of  conferred  potential  energy ; 
but  they  are  all  mere  theories — nothing  more.  Again,  is 
it  not  unaccountable  that  ice  is  the  only  crystal  that  will 
not  sink  in  water;  and  equally  unaccountable  that  water 
expands  at  the  boiling  point  as  well  as  at  the  freezing 
point?  In  fact,  the  resurrection  of  the  dead  is  no  more 
remarkable  than  the  mystery  of  life  itself. 

It  is  contrary  to  human  experience.  This  is  Hume's 
argument.  Richard  Whately,  adopting  Hume's  premises 
and  pursuing  his  logic  courageously,  made  it  appear  very 

1  See  note  5,  p.  106. 


84  HISTORICAL  MAN  OF  NAZARETH 

improbable  that  Napoleon  Bonaparte  ever  had  an  his- 
torical existence.1  But  I  must  net  digress  too  far. 

There  is  one  argument  which  will  establish  the  fact 
of  Christ's  Resurrection  beyond  a  reasonable  doubt.  Let 
me  illustrate.  Suppose  when  the  supreme  court  and  both 
branches  of  the  legislature  are  in  session,  and  your  gov- 
ernor is  attending  to  the  duties  of  his  office,  some  anarchist 
blows  up  the  capitol  with  dynamite  and  leaves  the  State 
without  a  constitutional  government:  and  after  we  have 
been  delivered  from  this  undesirable  state,  the  new  State 
government  sets  apart  January  2Oth  as  a  day  of  fasting 
and  prayer  that  Almighty  God  will  forever  deliver  us 
from  the  terrible  scourge  of  the  anarchist ;  that  two  thou- 
sand years  hence,  some  critical  historian  would  dispute 
the  fact  that  the  state  capitol  was  ever  blown  up.  His 
contemporaries  could  refute  him  by  pointing  to  the  ob- 
servance of  the  2Oth  day  of  January  as  a  fast  day.  Would 
it  have  been  possible  for  the  fast  to  have  been  established 
at  the  time,  if  the  event  had  not  taken  place?  Why,  the 
man  who  proposed  it  would  have  been  sent  to  the  mad- 
house. 

Within  two  months  of  Christ's  Resurrection,  his  fol- 
lowers began  to  observe  the  first  day  of  the  week  in  mem- 
ory of  that  event.  They  have  continued  the  observance 
ever  since.  Sunday  is  a  witness  to  the  Resurrection  not 
to  be  impeached.2 

If  we  accept  the  miracle  of  the  Resurrection,  it  is  an 
easy  matter  to  believe  in  his  miraculous  birth.  In  fact, 
such  belief  folloiws  as  a  logical  sequence  from  the  Resur- 
rection and  ascension.  Some  wise  men  remind  us  that 
of  the  Gospel  writers  two — Mark  and  John — make  no 
mention  of  the  miraculous  conception.  I  have  absolutely 

'See  note  6,  p.  106. 

*See  note  11,  latter  article. 


HISTORICAL  MAN  OF  NAZARETH  85 

heard  the  statement  made — and  have  seen  it  in  print — 
that  Matthew  is  the  only  one  who  mentions  it.  Those 
people  must  have  read  Luke  in  a  hurry.  There  was  little 
need  for  John  to  enter  into  the  details  of  the  miraculous 
conception  after  he  had  declared  Christ  to  be  God  the 
Creator.  It  is  true  that  Mark  makes  no  mention  of  this 
miraculous  birth.  Horace  Greeley,  in  his  American  Con- 
flict, the  history  of  the  Slave-Holders'  Rebellion,  does  not 
mention  the  raid  made  by  Confederate  refugees  in  Canada 
on  St.  Albans,  Vermont.  I  remember  something  of  the 
St.  Albans  raid,  and  should  like  to  be  alive  2,000  years 
hence  to  hear  people  say  that  it  never  took  place,  because 
Greeley  says  nothing  about  it. 

But  we  have  a  stronger  proof  yet  of  the  supernatural 
and  divine  character  of  Jesus  Christ.  Now,  my  friends, 
this  is  the  situation.  Jesus  Christ  was  a  Galilean  peasant ; 
by  human  means,  he  never  learned  to  read  and  write1 — 
"How  knoweth  this  man  letters  having  never  learned." 
He  had  no  political  power  or  prestige.  He  uttered  these 
prophecies : 

"O  Jerusalem,  Jerusalem,  thou  that  killest  the  prophets  and 
stonest  them  which  are  sent  unto  thee,  how  often  would  I  have 
gathered  thy  children  together,  even  as  a  hen  gathereth  her 
chickens  under  her  wings,  and  ye  would  not !  Behold  your  house 
is  left  unto  you  desolate." — Matthew,  xxiii.,  37-38. 

"Thine  enemies  shall  cast  a  trench  about  three,  and  compass 
thee  round,  and  keep  thee  in  on  every  side." — Luke,  xix.,  43. 

"Daughters  of  Jerusalem,  weep  not  for  me,  but  weep  for  your- 
selves, and  for  your  children.  For,  behold,  the  days  are  coming  in 
which  they  shall  say,  Blessed  are  the  barren,  and  the  wombs  that 
never  bare,  and  the  paps  that  never  gave  suck." — Luke,  xxiii., 
28-29. 

1  Since  this  was  written  the  author's  opinion  has  been  consider- 
ably modified,  but  a  full  discussion  would  require  a  treatise.  But 
see  Luke,  iv.,  16-18 ;  John,  viii.,  8.— W.  F.  B. 


86  HISTORICAL  MAN  OF  NAZARETH 

"And  when  ye  shall  see  Jerusalem  compassed  with  armies,  then 
know  that  the  desolation  thereof  is  nigh." — Luke,  xxi.,  20. 

"And  they  shall  fall  by  the  edge  of  the  sword,  and  shall  be  led 
away  captive  into  all  nations;  and  Jerusalem  be  trodden  down  of 
the  Gentiles,  until  the  times  of  the  Gentiles  be  fulfilled."— Luke, 
xxi.,  24. 

"When  ye,  therefore,  shall  be  the  abomination  of  desolation, 
spoken  of  by  Daniel  the  prophet  .  .  .  Then  let  them  which  be 
in  Judea  flee  into  the  mountains." — Matthew,  xxiv.,  15,  16. 

At  the  time  these  prophecies  were  uttered,  their  ful- 
filment was  highly  improbable.  Judea  was  a  province  of 
the  Roman  Empire  and  had  been  such  for  about  a  hun- 
dred years.  The  Romans  never  interfered  with  the  re- 
ligion of  any  nation.  The  Jews  were  exempted  by  Julius 
Caesar  from  the  payment  of  taxes  during  the  Sabbatical 
year.  Their  relations  with  the  Empire  were,  on  the  whole, 
pleasant.  No  human  prescience  could  have  foretold  what 
Jesus  prophesied. 

Let  us  see  how  well  these  prophecies  were  fulfilled.  A 
little  over  thirty  years  after  they  were  uttered  the  Jews 
broke  out  in  open  rebellion  against  Rome.  History  hardly 
records  a  more  foolhardy  attempt.  The  combat  between 
the  Briton  and  the  Boer  was  not  so  unequal.  Ce'stius,  a 
Roman  general,  invested  Jerusalem.  The  Jews  were  in 
his  power.  He  suddenly  raised  .the  siege  and  retreated. 
History  contains  nothing  more  remarkable  than  this  con- 
duct of  Cestius.  The  Jewish  historian,  Flavius  Josephus, 
says — these  are  his  exact  words:  "He  retired  from  the 
city  without  any  reason  in  the  world."  The  retreat  was 
without  doubt  providential.  As  soon  as  Cestius  was  gone, 
the  Christians,  remembering  the  words  of  Jesus,  "And 
when  ye  shall  see  Jerusalem  compassed  with  armies, 
know  ye  that  the  desolation  thereof  is  nigh."  "Then  let 
them  that  are  in  Judea  flee  into  the  mountains,"  fled  from 


HISTORICAL  MAN  OF  NAZARETH  87 

the  city  to  Pella  in  the  mountains  beyond  Jordan,  Here 
they  founded  a  church,  the  ruins  of  which  remain  to  this 
day.  The  Jews,  to  whom  this  particular  warning  had  not 
been  delivered  and  who  would  have  rejected  it  had  it  been, 
remained  and  perished.  This  flight  of  the  Christians  after 
the  retreat  of  Cestius  is  the  best  evidence  that  Christ  ut- 
tered that  prophecy.  When  the  Roman  general  Vespa- 
sian reinvested  the  city,  there  was  not  a  Christian  in  it. 
How  obdurate  must  be  the  unbelief  of  any  man  who  will 
deny  Christianity  in  the  face  of  such  evidence.  Verily, 
if  they  hear  not  Moses  and  the  prophets,  neither  will  they 
believe  if  one  rise  again  from  the  dead. 

But  the  fulfilment  of  these  wonderful  prophecies  does 
not  end  here.  Jesus  said,  "Your  enemies  shall  cast  up  a 
trench  about  you  and  keep  you  in  on  every  side."  We 
learn  from  Josephus  that  Titus,  who  succeeded  Vespasian 
in  command  of  the  Roman  army  before  Jerusalem,  sur- 
rounded the  city  with  a  wall,  and  reduced  the  poor  Jews 
to  the  utmost  extremity  of  famine.  Of  the  Jews  1,100,000 
were  slaughtered  during  the  siege. 

I  will  not  dwell  longer  on  this  phase  of  the  fulfilment, 
but  will  simply  ask  you  to  read  the  twenty-fourth  chapter 
of  Matthew,  and  then  read  the  twelfth  chapter  of  the 
fifth  book  and  the  sixth  book  of  Josephus'  Wars  of  the 
Jews. 

After  the  destruction  of  Jerusalem  and  the  scattering  of 
the  Jews,  the  city  remained  a  ruin  for  sixty  years  till  it 
was  rebuilt  by  the  emperor  Hadrian.  The  name  of  the 
city  was  changed  to  Aelia  Capitolina.  A  heathen  temple 
was  erected. 

About  the  year  363,  Julian,  commonly  called  the  Apos- 
tate, determined  to  rebuild  the  temple  of  the  Jews  on 
Mount  Moriah,  and  to  invite  the  Jews  to  return  to  the 


00  HISTORICAL  MAN  OF  NAZARETH 

Holy  City.  Julian  committed  this  work  to  his  minister 
and  close  friend,  Alypius.  What  Julian's  motive  was  I 
do  not  attempt  to  define.  He  may  have  acted  from  mo- 
tives of  state  policy ;  he  may  have  been  actuated  by  senti- 
mental regard  for  Jews,  coupled  with  a  dislike  for  Chris- 
tians; or,  as  is  generally  charged,  his  purpose  may  have 
been  to  falsify  the  prediction  of  Jesus  Christ.  But  v>e 
know,  and  that  by  pagan  as  well  as  by  Christian  authority, 
that  Alypius,  under  the  direction  of  Julian,  tried  to  re- 
build the  temple  at  Jerusalem  and  did  not  succeed.  The 
Jews  themselves  were  invited  to  take  part  in  the  work. 
Every  one  knows  how  enthusiastic  the  pious  Jew  has 
been  to  restore  the  Holy  City  and  the  worship  of  the 
temple.  This  is  proved  by  the  Zion  movement  of  our 
own  day.  The  Jews  had  then  a  better  opportunity  to  re- 
build the  temple  than  they  had  in  the  days  of  Nehemiah. 
There  were  plenty  of  wealthy  Jews  there  and  they  had 
substantial  backing,  the  head  of  the  Roman  Empire. 
No  ordinary  occurrence  would  have  put  a  stop  to  the 
work.  Now,  wrhat  was  in  the  way  of  restoring  the  Holy 
City?  Simply  the  word  of  a  Nazarene  carpenter,  cruci- 
fied more  than  three  hundred  years  before.  He  had  said, 
"Behold  your  house  is  left  unto  you  desolate";  and  all 
the  power  of  the  Roman  emperor  could  not  break  that 
prophecy.  But  I  am  getting  ahead  of  my  story.  What 
happened  down  there  at  Jerusalem?  I  will  quote  my 
author ;  and  he  is  not  a  Christian.  We  pass  by  Chrysos- 
tom,  Ambrose  and  Gregory  Nazianzen,  who  told  this  same 
story  and  defied  contradiction.  Ammianus  Marcellinus, 
Julian's  private  secretary  and  biographer,  wrote: 

"Cum  itaque  rei  fortiter  instaret  Alypius.  juvaretque  provinciof 
rector,  metuendi  globi  flammarum  prope  fundamenta  crebris  ad- 
sultibus  erumpentes  fecere  locum  exustis  aliquoties  operantibus 


HISTORICAL  MAN  OF  NAZARETH  89 

inaccessum;  hocque  tnodo  elemento  destinatius  repellente,  cessavit 
inceptum. — Ammianus  Marcellinus,  xxiii,  1. 

Translation. — "When  accordingly  Alypius  vigorously  pressed 
the  work,  and  the  governor  of  the  province  assisted,  fearful  balls 
of  fire,  breaking  out  near  the  foundations  by  frequent  and  re- 
peated attacks,  made  the  place  inaccessible  to  the  blasted  work- 
men; and  this  having  been  so  determined  by  the  repelling  element, 
the  undertaking  was  abandoned." 

Edward  Gibbon,  who,  by  the  way,  never  wrote  or  spoke 
a  word  for  Christianity,  closed  his  account  of  this  trans- 
action with  these  words,  "Such  authority  should  satisfy 
a  believing,  and  must  astonish  an  incredulous  mind.1 

About  six  months  after  this  event  Julian  was  killed. 
It  is  related  that  he  caught  the  fresh  blood  flowing  from 
his  wound  in  the  palm  of  his  hand ;  and,  hurling  it  toward 
heaven,  he  cried,  "Take  thy  fill,  Galilean ;  thou  hast  con- 
quered; but  still  I  do  renounce  thee."2  Whether  he  said 
this  or  not,  he  might  have  said  it  very  appropriately. 

I  was  once  talking  with  a  young  woman  tinctured  with 
agnosticism.  She  asked  what  proof  I  had  of  the  truth 
of  Christianity ;  I  told  her  this  story  of  the  prophecy  of 
Christ  and  Julian's  attempt  to  rebuild  the  temple.  She 
looked  into  my  face  with  her  honest  brown  eyes,  and 
asked,  "If  that  is  true,  sir,  why  does  any  one  doubt  the 
truth  of  Christianity?"  I  said  to  her  as  I  say  to  you,  / 
do  not  know. 

Two  hundred  and  fifty-one  years  after  this  remarkable 
event  Jerusalem  was  taken  by  the  Persians;  fourteen 
years  thereafter  it  was  retaken  by  the  Roman  emperor, 
Heraclius ;  nine  years  thereafter  it  was  taken  by  the  Mo- 
hammedans under  Caliph  Omar.  The  followers  of  the 
Arabian  prophet  held  it  in  undisputed  possession  till  near 

1  See  note  7,  p.  107. 
3  See  note  8,  p.  107. 


go  HISTORICAL  MAN  OF  NAZARETH 

the  close  of  the  eleventh  century.  It  was  literally  trodden 
down  of  the  Gentiles.  In  the  year  1095,  Peter  the  Hermit 
preached  the  First  Crusade.  A  more  successful  orator 
never  lived.  All  of  Christian  Europe  was  on  fire  with 
holy  zeal.  Remember  at  this  time  Russia  was  barbarian 
and  Spain  was  Mohammedan,  as  Turkey  is  to  day.  The 
bishop  who  presided  over  Rome's  comprehensive  see  of- 
fered a  plenary  indulgence  to  every  soldier  who  would 
enlist.  An  army  of  300,000  men  under  the  first  soldier1 
of  Europe  followed  the  standard  of  the  Cross  and  invaded 
Asia  to  fight  for  an  empty  sepulchre.  It  is  true  that,  after 
four  years  of  war,  they  took  Jerusalem,  and  went  through 
the  form  of  setting  up  a  kingdom.  But  they  never  took 
root  there,  and  after  196  years  of  almost  continuous  war- 
fare— seven  crusades — the  attempt  to  deliver  Jerusalem 
was  abandoned.  Why  was  this  attempt  unsuccessful? 
All  Europe  was  never  as  firmly  united  since  the  breaking 
up  of  the  Roman  Empire.  Italian,  German,  French, 
Scotch,  Englishmen,  fought  under  one  standard,  "Deus 
vult" — "God  wills  it."  They  had  the  stimulus  of  religious 
zeal,  the  moral  prestige  of  the  see  of  Rome.  Northern 
nations  have  almost  always  conquered  southern.  Witness 
Rome  and  Carthage ;  Rome  and  the  Northern  Barbarians ; 
the  North  and  the  South  in  the  late  war.  What  stood  in 
the  way  ?  Surely  it  was  not  the  Saracen,  no,  indeed — the 
simple  word  of  the  Man  of  Nazareth,  "Jerusalem  shall  be 
trodden  down  of  the  Gentiles  till  the  time  of  the  Gentiles 
be  fulfilled." 

Let  me  pause  to  say  a  word  of  Mohammed.  Under- 
stand that  I  do  not  stand  here  as  the  advocate  of  Islam. 
But  it  is  my  firm  belief  that  the  Arabian  was  as  much  an 


learned    Jew    Rashi    is    said    to    have   told    Godfrey   of 
Bouillon  that  he  would  fail.— W.  F.  B. 


91 

instrument  in  the  hands  of  God  as  was  any  man  that  ever 
lived.  The  Arabian  prophet  and  the  succeeding  caliphs 
conquered  Arabia,  subjugated  Egypt,  and  drove  the  fire- 
worshipers1  from  Persia.  In  this  vast  area,  equal  to  the 
ancient  dominion  of  Darius,  the  Mohammedan  caliphs 
tolerated  no  man  who  did  not  believe  in  one  personal  God ; 
and  that  Moslem  Empire  stood  as  an  impregnable  wall 
against  the  encroachments  from  the  East  of  Brahminism 
and  Buddhism.  We  have  had  a  taste  of  it  since  the  re- 
ligious congress  of  1893,  in  theosophy — so-called. 

To  sum  up :  Jesus  Christ  claimed  to  be  God  the  Creator. 
This  claim  being  a  matter  in  which  he  could  not  have 
been  self-deceived,  it  follows  that  he  was  either  what  he 
claimed  to  be  or  an  arrant  impostor.  He  could  not  have 
been  an  impostor  because  ( I )  the  admitted  history  of  his 
life  was  inconsistent  with  the  career  of  an  impostor;  (2) 
his  coming  was  authentically  predicted  fourteen  hundred 
years  before  the  event  took  place,  and  such  a  prediction 
was  beyond  the  power  of  man;  (3)  the  cardinal  miracle, 
the  Resurrection,  which  is  no  more  wonderful  than  ad- 
mitted natural  phenomena,  is  proved  by  two  witnesses  and 
by  the  institution  of  the  Lord's  day;  (4)  the  divinity  of 
Christ  is  proved  by  prophecies  which  he  uttered,  which 
were  beyond  the  power  of  human  prescience,  and  their 
fulfilment  is  a  part  of  the  world's  history ;  they  have  been 
continuous  miracles  with  all  the  world  for  witnesses;  (5) 
the  proof  of  Christ's  divinity  takes  the  whole  Bible  with  it. 

Now,  methinks,  the  truth  of  Christianity  is  established. 
For  what  do  they  ask  you  to  throw  your  Bible  over  the 
transom?  A  few  years  ago  the  old-fashioned  infidelity 
of  Thomas  Paine  was  in  vogue.  It  is  about  a  third  of  a 
century  since  a  number  of  passengers  were  riding  in  an 

JThis  is  a  slander.    The  Parsi  does  not  worship  fire. — W .  F.  B. 


92  HISTORICAL  MAN  OF  NAZARETH 

old-fashioned  stage  coach.  Among  them  was  a  young 
man,  one  of  those  tremendous  fellows,  in  his  own  esti- 
mation, who  was  trying  to  ridicule  the  Bible  as  a  mass  of 
fairy  tales  and  priestcraft.  He  was  holding  up  the  story 
of  David  and  Goliah,  and  trying  to  make  it  appear  ab- 
surd. No  one  replied.  An  old  Quaker  was  in  the  coach. 
Turning  to  the  broad-brim,  the  stripling  inquired :  "Old 
man,  what  do  you  think  of  a  boy  throwing  a  stone  and 
breaking  through  a  giant's  skull?"  The  disciple  of 
George  Fox  replied:  "Indeed,  friend,  I  should  think  it 
nothing  strange  were  the  Philistine's  head  as  soft  as 
thine."  But  that  kind  of  infidelity  has  nearly  died  out. 
The  man  from  Peoria  fanned  the  dying  embers  for  a  time. 
But  now  he  is  gone. 

We  now  have  to  face  the  opposition  of  science,  falsely 
socalled.  Ah!  how  many  times  have  I  heard  some  fel- 
low who  could  not  tell  black  tourmaline  from  old  red 
stone,  who  could  not  name  the  satellites  of  Jupiter  to  save 
his  life,  who  could  not  separate  botanically  a  dandelion 
from  a  sweet  potato,  who  did  not  know  whether  Christ 
was  crucified  on  Calvary  or  shot  at  Marathon,1  laying 
down  the  astounding  proposition  that  science  demon- 
strated that  the  world  could  not  have  been  made  in  six 
days.  There  is  no  such  statement  in  the  Bible.  "In  the 
beginning  God  created  the  heavens  and  the  earth."  When 
was  the  beginning?  This  is  no  invention  of  modern  the- 
ologians. I  have  often  wondered  why  the  early  fathers 
of  the  church  have  been  so  neglected.  In  the  writings  of 
the  fathers,  there  is  a  complete  answer  to  the  six  days 
theory,  written  by  Origen  fifteen  centuries  before  the 
science  of  geology  was  discovered.  Now,  I  have  studied 
all  physical  sciences  as  you  are  studying  them  now.  But 

lThis  last  is  a  paraphrase  on  the  man  from  Peoria. — W.  F.  B. 


HISTORICAL  MAN  OF  NAZARETH  93 

with  geology  I  have  had  some  practical  experience.  It 
was  circumstances  over  which  I  had  no  control  that  kept 
me  from  following  that  science  as  my  life  work.  Do  you 
wish  to  know  what  I  think  of  it?  Bishop  Watson  com- 
pared a  geologist  to  a  gnat  mounted  on  an  elephant's  back 
laying  down  theories  in  regard  to  the  whole  internal 
anatomy  of  the  vast  animal  from  the  phenomena  of  the 
hide.1  This  is  the  cutest  and  justest  comparison  I  ever 
saw. 

A  third  of  a  century  ago  geologists  accepted  the  the- 
ory that  the  earth  was  a  huge  ball  of  fire  covered  by  a 
shell  thinner  accordingly  than  an  egg-shell ;  that  we  lived 
on  this  shell  and  were  rushing  through  space  at  the  rate 
of  183^  miles  a  second.  They  had  the  authority  of  the 
great  Humboldt.  Better  still,  they  proved  their  theory 
by  the  uniform  increase  of  heat  toward  the  earth's  cen- 
tre. Now,  any  man  who  would  advocate  that  theory 
would  be  laughed-at.2  The  objector  tenders  proof  by 

lrrhe  strata  of  the  earth  reveal  its  history  with  great  fidelity 
for  long  periods  previous  to  the  present,  but  earlier  than  that  the 
record  is  indistinct,  and  if  we  attempt  to  follow  it  back  to  the 
beginning,  the  indistinctness  merges  into  extreme  obscurity.  The 
rocks  at  the  base  of  the  known  sedimentary  series  are  so  greatly 
disrupted,  crumpled,  crushed,  metamorphosed,  and  traversed  by 
intrusions  that  their  history  is  deciphered  with  the  greatest  diffi- 
culty and  no  little  uncertainty,  while  below  these  lie  the  inaccess- 
ible interior  of  the  earth,  whose  formation  constitutes  a  still  earlier 
chapter  in  the  history.  The  nature  of  this  inaccessible  mass  can 
only  be  inferred  from  volcanic  intrusions,  the  transmission  of 
seismic  tremors,  the  phenomena  of  gravity,  the  distribution  of 
frigidity  and  of  internal  heat,  the  modes  and  processes  of  de- 
formation, and  other  phenomena  of  a  more  or  less  dynamic  kind. 
All  these  phenomena  have  their  bearing  on  the  problem  of  the 
earth's  origin,  but  just  what  they  imply  can  not  be  interpreted 
without  some  measure  of  reasonable  doubt.  —  Chambcrlin  and 
Saulsbury,  Geology. 

2  See  Humboldt,  COSMOS,  volume  I.,  pp.  170,  171,  for  a  brief 
statement  of  John  Cleves  Symmes's  theory  of  the  hollow  sphere 
of  the  earth;  also  Atlantic  Monthly,  volume  XXXI,  page  471.  It 
is  easy  to  brush  a  theory  aside  as  unscientific,  but  although  it  is  a 


94  HISTORICAL  MAN  OF  NAZARETH 

the  laws  of  physics  that,  were  the  earth  a  liquid  sphere 
with  a  shell  of  steel  300  miles  thick,  this  shell  would  be 
snapped  into  fragments  in  a  second  of  time,  probably 
not  by  force  of  the  earth's  own  motion,  for  its  spherical 
form  would  protect  it  from  that  danger,  but  by  the  at- 
traction of  the  other  heavenly  bodies. 

I  have  stood  upon  three  of  the  highest  summits  of  the 
White  Mountain  range  in  northern  New  Hampshire. 
Within  fifty  feet  of  the  summit  Moosilauke  the  mountain 
is  encircled  -with  a  bed  of  marine  shells,  and  upon  the 
rocks  near  the  summit  are  scratches  or  abrasions,  all 
pointing  south  2  degrees  east.  Upon  the  prairies  of 
Nebraska  I  have  seen  thousands  of  erratic  boulders,  pop- 
ularly called  niggerheads,  of  different  composition  from 
the  soil.  These  facts  and  others  convince  us  that  the 
North  American  continent,  or  a  greater  part  of  it,  was 
once  covered  with  a  glacial  mass  drifting  south  with 
slight  inclination  toward  the  east.1  Here  fact  ends,  and 
fancy  begins.  What  caused  this  glacial  invasion?  "A 
change  in  the  inclination  of  the  earth's  axis  to  the  plane 
of  its  orbit,"  says  one ;  "an  increased  eccentricity  of  the 
orbit  itself  at  aphelion,"  says  another.  About  a  fourth 
of  a  century  ago  a  Belgian  professor  advanced  the  theory 
that,  as  ice  was  accumulating  about  the  south  pole,  and, 
owing  to  ocean  currents,  it  was  not  accumulating  about 
the  North  Pole,  the  time  would  come  when  the  earth 
would  lose  its  equilibrium,  tilt  over,  and  we  would  enjoy 
a  wholesale  ice  freshet ;  civilisation  would  be  wiped  out ; 
only  people  who  happened  to  be  on  highest  points  of 
land  would  escape;  and  these  would  repeople  the  earth. 

bold  hypothesis,  based  upon  arbitrary  speculation,  it  has  no  greater 
difficulties  than  anything  science  has  yet  offered. — W.  F.  B. 

xThis  is  true  only  east  of  the  Great  Lakes;  to  the  west  of  them 
the  drift  is  in  another  direction. — W.  F.  B, 


HISTORICAL  MAN  OF  NAZARETH  95 

The  Belgian  claimed  that  this  had  occurred  already  fifteen 
times  in  the  history  of  our  planet.  The  last  was  in  the 
days  of  Noah.  Whether  this  is  a  plausible  way  of  ac- 
counting for  the  ice  age  I  shall  not  stop  now  to  inquire. 
But  there  is  another  class  of  speculators  who  say  that 
ages  ago,  our  great-great-very  great — the  Lord  knows 
how  great — grandfather  was  what  Plato  or  Diogenes 
would  call  a  wingless  biped;  that  when  this  great  mass 
of  ice  came  slipping  down  from  the  North  Pole,  its  ad- 
vance guard  was  an  immense  cloud  of  vapor  caused  by 
melting  ice.  This  condensed  and  fell  in  rain,  and  our 
poor  great-great-  very-great-forefather  did  not  have  an 
umbrella  or  macintosh,  and  poor  old  ma — I  mean  mon- 
key— ran  into  a  cave  to  get  out  of  the  wet.  By  and  by, 
the  ice  arrived;  and  it  got  so  cold  he  invented  clothes 
to  confine  the  animal  heat  and  keep  himself  warm.  He 
blundered  around  and  discovered  that  by  rubbing  a  piece 
of  hard  wood  against  a  piece  of  soft  wood  he  could  get 
up  a  fire,  and  then  he  began  to  cook  his  food.1  Nobody 
knows  how  many  years  he  lived  in  that  cave.  But  by 
and  by  our  great-great-great-  not-quite-so-great-grand- 
father moved  out  of  the  cave.  It  was  warmer  weather 
outside.  The  ice  was  all  gone.  But  he  had  got  so  used 
to  living  under  cover  that  he  built  himself  a  hut.  So 
he  kept  on  by  repeated  evolutions  till  he  turned  up  a 
Wilber force,  a  Wesley  or  a  Vincent  de  Paul.  If  you  call 
this  stuff  science,  you  might  call  the  Arabian  Nights 
science.  We  wonder  that  the  Egyptians,  with  all  their 
civilisation,  worshiped  a  bull,  and  created  a  temple  to  the 
monkey-god.  What  will  people  say  of  us  three  thousand 
years  from  now? 


'Man  is  an  animal  that  cooks  his  victuals. — Burke. 


96  HISTORICAL  MAN  OF  NAZARETH 

Now,  it  may  be  that  monkey  pedigree  is  reconcilable 
with  the  theistic  theory.  But  it  can  not  be  reconciled 
with  the  divine  mission  of  Jesus  Christ.  If  a  man  has 
been  redeemed  and  is  being  redeemed  by  sexual  selection 
and  the  survival  of  the  fittest,  let  us  never  again  pray : 

"By  thy  agony  and  blood ;  by  thy  cross  and  passion ;  by  thy 
precious  death  and  burial ;  by  thy  glorious  resurrection  and 
ascension,  Good  Lord  deliver  us !" 

Oh !  can  it  be  the  words  my  infant  lips  were  taught  to 
lisp  are  a  sounding  brass  and  tinkling  cymbal. 

"Oh !  star-eyed  Science,  hast  thou  wandered  there, 
To  waft  us  home  the  message  of  despair?" 

My  materialistic  friend — you  that  deny  that  there  is  a 
spirit  in  man — chemists  tell  us  that  four-fifths  of  the 
human  brain  is  water;  the  other  fifth  is  made  up  of 
albumen,  fat,  phosphorus,  osmazome,  acid,  salt  and  sul- 
phur.1 You  believe  that  from  this  conglomeration  came 
Newton's  Principia,  Homer's  Iliad,  and  the  Venus  Medici. 
Sit  down  at  your  table ;  in  a  vessel  of  water  put  fat  meat, 
the  brown  substance  from  roast  beef,  table  salt,  vinegar, 
the  white  of  an  egg,  then  whittle  in  the  business  end  of 
a  few  lucifer  matches,  and  you  have  the  chemical  com- 
position of  the  human  brain.  Could  you,  by  devoting 
your  life  to  the  task,  produce  a  brain  out  of  that  ma- 
terial? All  your  boasted  science  has  never  localised  the 
principle  of  life  or  solved  the  mystery  of  thought.  You 
say  you  believe  in  force  and  matter.  What  is  force? 
Have  you  ever  seen  it?  Have  you  ever  touched  or  han- 
dled it?  I  will  tell  you  what  it  is.  It  is  another  name 
for  your  ignorance.  You  deny  the  miracles  of  the  Old 
Testament,  the  miraculous  conception  of  Christ,  the  mir- 


JThe  Frenchman  Vanquelin,  1812.    Since  then  other  chemists 
have  extracted  ethyl-alcohol  and  saccharine. — W.  F.  B. 


HISTORICAL  MAN  OF  NAZARETH  97 

acles  which  he  wrought,  his  Resurrection,  when  you  can 
not  explain  the  phenomena  of  your  own  little  brain  that 
makes  these  denials.  Read  and  study  the  Book  of  Job, 
where  in  the  last  act  of  that  great  drama  God  speaks  out 
of  the  whirlwind  and  says  to  Job  and  his  friends,  in  sub- 
stance, Why  do  you  discuss  my  government  of  the  world, 
when  you  can  not  explain  the  ordinary  instincts  of  ani- 
mals? And,  my  materialistic  friend,  when  you  will  tell 
me  what  makes  the  difference  between  anthracite  coal 
and  diamond,  which  have  the  same  chemical  composition, 
it  will  be  time  enough  for  you  to  discourse  on  this  law 
of  nature  that  you  are  always  prating  about — this  law 
that  nobody  made.  Neither  you  nor  I  know  as  much 
about  the  law  of  nature  as  a  Kickapoo  Indian  knows 
about  the  Constitution  of  the  United  States. 

There  are  some  things  proper  for  a  man  to  investigate, 
others  which  it  is  impertinent  and  blasphemous  for  him 
to  try  to  solve.  St.  Augustine  was  asked  by  a  skeptic, 
"What  was  God  doing  before  he  made  the  world  ?"  The 
stern  old  African  replied :  "Creating  hell,  sir,  for  priers 
into  his  mysteries."1 

Do  I  reject  science?  No,  it  is  the  handmaid  of  re- 
ligion. The  great  discoveries  in  science  have  been  made, 
not  by  unbelievers,  but  by  Christians.  Copernicus,  Galileo 
and  Kepler  were  all  sincere  and  devout  Christians.  Ge- 
ology was  discovered  by  a  Christian.  The  first  successful 
observation  of  the  transit  of  Venus  was  made  by  a  clergy- 
man of  the  English  Church.  A  bishop  of  the  Methodist 
Episcopal  Church  has  written  the  best  popular  handbook 
of  astronomy  ever  published.  The  man  from  Peoria 

*I  have  not  the  Latin  text  before  me.  As  I  now  remember,  the 
following  would  be  a  fair  rendering:  "I  do  not  know;  I  will  not 
say  that  He  was  creating  Hell  for  priers  into  his  mysteries." — W. 
F.  B. 


98  HISTORICAL  MAN  OF  NAZARETH 

could  not  have  written  the  book.     He  did  not  know 
enough. 

I  said  that  science  was  the  handmaid  of  religion.  The 
Gospel  narrative  of  Christ's  passion  is  proof  positive.  In 
those  days,  among  the  Jews,  with  their  extreme  doctrine 
of  ritualistic  uncleanness,  the  science  of  anatomy  had 
practically  no  existence.  Were  a  physician  called  upon 
to  testify  as  to  the  cause  of  a  certain  person's  death,  and 
he  had  to  depend  for  his  diagnosis  upon  the  personal 
knowledge  of  an  ignorant  nurse,  and  the  nurse  in  de- 
scribing the  symptoms  described  blood  poisoning,  the 
ignorance  of  the  nurse  would  be  additional  evidence  of 
the  truth  of  the  ultimate  fact.  The  physician  would  say, 
and  justly,  "She  is  too  ignorant  to  have  made  up  this 
story,  yet  the  facts  are  a  perfect  description  of  blood- 
poisoning."  Xow,  the  more  ignorant  you  prove  the  evan- 
gelists the  more  valuable  their  testimony.  Luke  was  the 
only  one  of  them  possessing  technical  knowledge,  and  he 
possessed  no  personal  knowledge  of  the  facts.  It  is  cer- 
tain that  the  Saviour  did  not  die  from  crucifixion.  Why  ? 
First,  we  have  every  reason  to  believe  that  he  was  a 
strong,  vigorous  man.  He  had  worked  at  manual  labor 
till  he  was  of  mature  age;  he  passed  most  of  his  time 
in  the  open  air;  his  assault  upon  the  money  changers  in 
the  temple  shows  that,  without  the  use  of  a  miracle,  he 
was  the  physical  match  for  a  host.  Being  thus  vigorous, 
there  was  no  reason  why  he  should  die  sooner  than  others 
who  were  crucified  in  ancient  times.  The  crucified  lived 
for  a  long  time,  not  infrequently  four  or  five  days.  There 
is  some  misunderstanding,  even  among  the  learned,  as 
to  this  method  of  punishment.  It  is  true  that  the  victim 
was  nailed  by  his  hands  and  feet  to  pieces  of  wood  cross- 
ing each  other  at  right  angles,  but  the  weight  of  the  body 
rested  upon  a  bar  of  wood  projecting  from  the  upright. 


HISTORICAL  MAN  OF  NAZARETH  9Q 

Death  resulted  from  nervous  exhaustion  from  being  kept 
in  one  position.  No  doubt  tetanus  or  locked  jaw  some- 
times intervened,  though  the  symptoms  of  that  terrible 
disorder  have  never  been  described  by  any  ancient  writer. 
Christ  was  arrested  a  little  before  midnight,  and  by  nine 
o'clock,  by  the  summary  method  of  dealing  with  provin- 
cials who  could  not  appeal  to  Caesar,  he  was  hanging  upon 
a  cross;  at  three  o'clock  he  was  dead.  There  is  another 
reason  which  might  be  advanced  to  show  that  death  was 
not  the  result  of  crucifixion.  It  is  a  well-known  fact  that 
a  person  of  fortitude  will  survive  much  longer  than  a 
weakling.  The  alleged  "Reverend"  Mr.  Abbott,  who  the 
supreme  court  of  New  Hampshire  decided  was  not  en- 
titled to  be  called  a  Protestant,1  says  the  Saviour  showed 
a  lack  of  fortitude.  If  a  man  about  to  have  his  leg  ampu- 
tated would  refuse  to  take  chloroform,  would  he  be 
accused  of  want  of  fortitude?  When  in  ancient  times 
a  person  was  crucified,  it  was  customary  to  give  the  con- 
demned man  a  cup  of  medicated  wine,  either  to  impart 
fortitude  or  produce  intoxication  and  consequent  stupor. 
When  this  drink  was  offered  to  Christ  he  refused  it,  and 
met  his  death  with  divine  fortitude.  Throughout  his 
trial  and  execution  he  showed  the  utmost  firmness  and 
self-possession.  He  died,  beyond  question,  of  heart- 
rupture  preceded  by  diapedesis,  or  the  oozing  of  the  cor- 
puscles of  blood  through  the  blood  vessels  without  rup- 
ture. Heart-rupture  is  medically  described  as  follows: 

"The  immediate  cause  is  a  sudden  and  violent  contraction  of 
one  of  the  ventricles,  usually  the  left,  and  the  column  of  blood 
thrown  into  it  by  a  similar  contraction  of  the  corresponding 
auricle.  Prevented  from  returning  backward  by  the  intervening 
valve,  and  not  finding  a  sufficient  outlet  forward  in  the  connected 
artery,  the  blood  reacts  against  the  ventricle  itself,  which  is  con- 

'Hale  vs.  Everett,  53  N.  H.,  9. 


IOO  HISTORICAL  MAN  OF  NAZARETH 

sequently  torn  open  at  the  point  of  greatest  distenticn  or  at  least 
resistance,  by  the  influence  of  its  own  reflected  force.  A  quantity 
of  blood  is  thereby  discharged  into  the  pericardium,  and  having 
no  means  of  escape  from  that  capsule,  stops  the  circulation  by 
compressing  the  heart  from  without,  and  induces  almost  instan- 
taneous death.  The  blood  in  the  pericardium  separates  into  its 
constituent  parts." — Stroud,  Physical  Cause  of  the  Death  of  Christ. 

Diapedesis  and  heart-rupture  are  things  of  rare  oc- 
currence. They  are  caused  by  the  most  intense  grief. 
Voltaire1  tells  us  that  Charles  IX.  of  France  died  of 
blood-sweating,  from  remorse  for  the  wholesale  murder 
of  St.  Bartholomew.  Among  other  symptoms  of  heart- 
rupture  is  the  uttering  of  a  piercing  cry  at  the  moment 
of  the  rupture.  Every  Sunday  school  boy  has  in  mind 
the  cry  of  our  Lord,  "Eli  Eli,  lama  sabacthani" — "My 
God,  My  God,  for  what  hast  thou  forsaken  me."  After 
the  soldier  had  dipped  the  sponge  in  poska,  the  common 
drink  of  the  Roman  soldiers,  and  pressed  it  to  the  lips 
of  the  dying  Saviour,  the  Gospel  tells  us  that  Jesus  cried 
with  a  loud  voice  and  yielded  up  the  ghost,  and  when 
another  soldier  pierced  his  side  the  separated  parts  of 
blood  flowed  forth  in  the  form  of  blood  and  water.  If 
time  would  permit,  I  might  show  a  score  of  Old  Testa- 
ment prophecies  that  were  fulfilled  by  this  manner  of 
Christ's  death. 

Young  men,  you  are  nowhere  safe  from  the  poison  of 
unbelief.  But,  as  you  go  forth  into  the  world,  you  will 
hear  men  say:  "Well,  if  a  man  thinks  he  is  right,  he 
will  be  all  right."  On  the  same  principle,  if  I  go  to  the 
B.  &  M.  station,  get  on  the  train  with  the  intention  of 
going  to  Hastings,  and  the  train  happens  to  be  headed 
for  Omaha,  I  will  land  in  Hastings  because  1  think  that 
I  am  going  there. 

1  See  note  11,  p.  109. 


HISTORICAL  MAN  OF  NAZARETH  IOI 

* 

Young  man,  remember  this :  God  has  given  to  every 
man  sufficient  grace  for  his  salvation.  The  belief  that 
Almighty  God  ever  foreordained  the  damnation  of  a 
human  being  is  not  only  unworthy  of  a  Christian,  but 
it  would  scandalise  a  respectable  pagan.  God  gave  Peter 
efficacious  grace,  but  he  gave  Judas  sufficient  grace.  The 
unpardonable  sin  was  not  in  selling  his  Lord  for  $23>7o1 ; 
it  was  in  the  fact  that  he  despaired  of  God's  mercy  and 
went  and  hanged  himself.  No,  I  repeat,  God  never  cre- 
ated any  man  for  the  purpose  of  damning  him. 

"Come,  ye  blessed  of  my  Father,  inherit  the  kingdom  prepared 
for  you  from  the  foundation  of  the  world." 

"Depart  ye  cursed  into  everlasting  fire  prepared" — not  for  you — 
"for  the  Devil  and  his  angels." 

Remember,  again,  in  this  matter  we  have  been  discuss- 
ing, no  man  will  be  deceived,  unless  he  wants  to  be 
deceived. 

Young  men  and  young  women  (I  have  used  men  be- 
fore in  the  generic  sense),  you  will  be  poorly  equipped 
for  life  if  you  are  not  prepared  to  defend  your  faith 
against  the  most  improved  methods  of  Satanic  warfare. 
When  you  meet  one  of  the  literary  unbelievers  who  tells 
you  the  synoptic  gospels  are  not  good  Greek,  freely  admit 
it.  If  you  do  not,  he  will  have  the  best  of  you.  Tell 
him  that  the  first  three  evangelists  did  not  write  good 
Hellenic  Greek.  They  did  not  write  like  Xenophon,  like 
Plutarch  or  even  like  Josephus.  They  wrote  as  Matthew, 
Mark  and  Luke  would  write.  Then  ask  your  critical 
friend  to  consider  the  little  toddling  child  upon  the  side- 
walk. It  walks  by  its  own  strength ;  but  the  guiding 
hand  of  the  mother  is  behind  to  take  care  that  it.  does 
not  stumble  and  fall.2  So  these  evangelists  wrote  with 

1  See  note  9,  p.  108. 

2  A  figure  used  by  Thomas  Bonacum,  R.  C.  Bishop  of  Lincoln. 


IO2  HISTORICAL  MAN  OF  NAZARETH 

their  own  individuality,  but  guided  by  God's  spirit,  and 
they  could  not  fall  into  error. 

I  do  not  believe  in  keeping  everything  away  from  a 
boy.  Let  him  read  Paine's  Age  of  Reason,  but  make  him 
read  Watson's  reply.  It  would  hardly  pay  him  to  waste 
his  time  with  the  trash  of  the  man  from  Peoria,  for  that 
hasn't  even  literary  merit.  Let  him  read  Colenso  On 
the  Pentateuch;  but  have  him  read  Pusey  as  well. 
Give  him  the  Historical  Jesus  of  Nazareth.  Then  give 
him  Paley's  Horae  Paulinae.  Have  him  study  it,  as  he 
would  study  Euclid;  and  that  boy  will  go  forth  to  the 
battle  of  life  with  a  faith  that  is  invincibJe. 

We  live  in  a  materialistic  age.  America  now  is  as 
Rome  was  in  the  century  immediately  preceding  the 
Christian  era,  as  France  was  in  the  last  half  of  the 
eighteenth  century.  That  elegant,  erudite  and  genteel 
trimmer,  Marcus  Tullius  Cicero,  in  his  philosophical 
works,  argues  for  the  immortality  of  the  human  soul. 
But  we  learn  from  his  private  correspondence  that  his 
belief  was  not  firm.  Gaius  Julius  Caesar,  high  priest 
of  Rome,  stood  up  in  the  Roman  senate  to  declare 
that  to  die  was  dissolvere  cuncta  mala  mortalium — to 
dissolve  all  the  evils  of  mortals ;  neither  is  there  any 
place  beyond  it  for  care  or  joy — that  is  to  say,  physical 
death  is  the  end  of  man. 

In  France  Rousseau  and  Voltaire1  had  taught  mankind 
that  the  religion  of  Jesus  Christ  was  but  a  fable.  This 
avowal  had  for  its  logical  outcome  the  worship  of  Rea- 
son and  the  Reign  of  Terror. 

In  this  age  of  ours,  when  man  is  wise  above  what  is 
written ;  when  Genesis  has  been  revised  by  the  uncertain 
light  of  geology;  when  wise  men  have  put  protoplasm 

1  See  note  11,  p.  109. 


HISTORICAL  MAN  OF  NAZARETH  IO3 

in  place  of  God,  and  a  chimpanzee  in  place  of  Adam; 
when  the  Gospel  of  the  Nazarene,  according  to  Matthew, 
Mark,  Luke  and  John,  is  pushed  aside  to  give  place 
to  the  Gospel  of  Dirt,  according  to  Darwin,1  Tyndall, 
Haeckel,  and  Biichner;  when  a  large  minority  of  our 
educated  countrymen  are  agnostic;  when  the  sophomore 
and  the  drayman,  alike,  can  repeat  by  rote  the  anarchistic 
ravings  and  atheistic  rant  of  Johann  Most  and  the  coarse 
blasphemy  of  the  Peorian ;  when  that  green,  slimy,  slip- 
pery frog  which  men  miscall  higher  criticism  has  hopped 
up  the  church  aisle  and  sits  upon  the  pulpit  cushion; 
when  Hell  is  reduced  to  a  skating-rink;  when  so-called 
clergymen  are  guilty  of  a  grievous  contempt  of  court  by 
presuming  to  sit  judgment  on  the  eternal  justice  of  God — 
we  can  say  to  these  critics  and  scoffers  what  Bishop 
Watson  said  to  Thomas  Paine: 

"The  Bible,  sir,  has  withstood  the  learning  of  Prophyry,  and 
the  power  of  Julian,  to  say  nothing  of  the  Manichean  Faustus ;  it 
has  resisted  the  genius  of  Bolingbroke,  and  the  wit  of  Voltaire,2 
to  say  nothing  of  a  numerous  herd  of  inferior  assailants ;  and  it 
will  not  fall  by  your  force.  You  have  barbed  anew  the  blunted 
arrows  of  former  adversaries ;  you  have  feathered  them  with  blas- 
phemy and  ridicule ;  dipped  them  in  the  deadliest  poison ;  aimed 
them  with  your  utmost  skill ;  shot  them  against  the  shield  of  faith 
with  your  utmost  vigor;  but,  like  the  feeble  javelin  of  aged  Priam, 
they  will  scarcely  reach  the  mark,  will  fall  to  the  ground  without 
a  stroke." 


lSee  note  10,  p.  108. 
3  See  note  11,  p.  109. 


IO4  HISTORICAL  MAN  OF  NAZARETH 


NOTES  ON  THE  HISTORICAL  MAN  OF  NAZARETH 

NOTE  1. — John  Hardouin,  a  French  Jesuit,  born  m  1646,  died 
September  3,  1729,  published  a  work  in  1693  and  1697  in  which 
he  maintained  that  none  of  the  ancient  classics  were  genuine  ex- 
cept Homer,  Herodotos,  Cicero,  Pliny  the  Elder,  the  Georgics  of 
Vergil  and  the  satires  and  epistles  of  Horace ;  that  the  others  were 
fabrications  and  had  no  existence  until  less  than  a  century  before 
the  Renaissance ;  that  the  Aeneid  of  Vergil  was  an  allegory  of  the 
progress  of  Christianity.  See  an  article  by  the  present  writer  in 
the  Atlantic 'for  April,  1897.— W.  F.  B. 

NOTE  2. — The  late  Ignatius  Donnelly,  the  ablest  advocate  of 
the  Baconian  theory  that  ever  lived,  was  the  intimate  personal 
friend  of  the  present  writer.  I  revere  his  memory,  but  reject  his 
theory.  A  book  as  interesting  as  the  elder  Disraeli's  Curiosities 
of  Literature  might  be  written  on  "Disputed  Authorship."  The 
Rev.  Joshua  Barnes  (1654-1712),  an  Englishman  and  a  Cambridge 
scholar,  wrote  an  elaborate  work,  still  preserved  in  the  achives 
of  Cambridge,  in  which  he  maintained  that  Solomon  wrote  the 
Iliad.  In  justice  to  the  author,  let  it  be  said  that  it  is  doubtful 
if  he  ever  credited  his  absurd  theory.  It  is  probable,  rather,  that 
the  book  was  written  to  persuade  his  pious  and  wealthy  wife  to 
furnish  the  means  for  him  to  publish  an  edition  of  Homer  which 
he  had  prepared.  A  book  was  published  by  Senator  Moody  of 
Kansas  to  prove  that  Thomas  Paine  wrote  the  Junius  Letters, 
and  this  theory  has  been  defended  by  William  Henry  Burr  of 
Washington.  Shades  of  Lord  Sackville  and  Sir  Philip  Francis! — 
W.  F.  B. 

NOTE  3. — Jacob  Bryant,  a  Cambridge  scholar,  born  at  Plymouth, 
England,  November  14,  1715,  died  1804,  was  private  secretary  to 
the  Duke  of  Marlborough  and  was  with  him  in  Germany.  By 
the  substantial  favors  of  his  patron's  family,  he  was  raised 
above  pecuniary  want  and  devoted  the  remainder  of  his  life  to 
the  study  of  abstruse  scriptural  and  classical  questions.  Byron 
alludes  to  him  with  covert  sarcasm  in  Don  Juan,  canto  IV.,  stanza 
76,  line  4.  But  his  name  is  almost  forgotten.  Bryant  wrote, 
among  other  things,  Vendiciae  Flavianae — a  defense  of  Josephus' 


NOTES  105 

testimony  in  regard  to  Christ.  To  this  work  of  real  value,  most 
rare  and  not  easily  obtained,  the  reader  is  referred  for  arguments 
in  favor  of  the  genuineness  of  the  passage  of  Josephus  found  in 
the  text.  I  have  said  in  the  text  that  the  ancestor  of  Josephus 
was  almost  certainly  engaged  in  compassing  Christ's  death.  His 
father,  Matthias,  was  a  priest  at  Jerusalem. — W .  F.  B. 

NOTE  4. — Herodotos  relates  the  following  concerning  the 
Babylonians : 

"The  most  disgraceful  of  the  Babylonian  customs  is  the  follow- 
ing: Every  native  woman  is  obliged,  once  in  her  life,  to  sit  in  the 
temple  of  Venus,  and  have  intercourse  with  some  stranger.  And 
many  disdaining  to  mix  with  the  rest,  being  proud  on  account  of 
their  wealth,  come  in  covered  carriages,  and  take  up  their  station 
at  the  temple  with  a  numerous  train  of  servants  attending  them. 
But  the  far  greater  part  do  thus :  many  sit  down  in  the  temple  of 
Venus  wearing  a  crown  of  cord  round  their  heads ;  some  are  con- 
tinually coming  in  and  others  are  going  out.  Passages  marked  out 
in  a  straight  line  lead  in  every  direction  through  the  women,  along 
which  strangers  pass  and  make  their  choice.  When  a  woman  has 
once  seated  herself,  she  must  not  return  home  till  some  stranger 
has  thrown  a  piece  of  silver  into  her  lap  and  lain  with  her  outside 
the  temple.  He  who  throws  the  silver  must  say  thus :  'I  beseech 
the  goddess  Mylitta  to  favour  thee,'  for  the  Assyrians  call  Venus 
Mylitta.  The  silver  may  be  ever  so  small,  for  she  will  not  reject 
it,  inasmuch  as  it  is  not  lawful  for  her  to  do  so,  for  such  silver  is 
accounted  sacred.  The  woman  follows  the  first  man  that  throws 
and  refuses  no  one." — Book  I.,  199,  translation  from  Baehr's  text. 

This  is  confirmed  by  an  allusion  in  the  Book  of  Baruch,  who 
was  private  secretary  to  Jeremiah : 

Mulieres  autem  circumdatae  funibus  in  yiis  sedcnt,  succendentes 
ossa  olivarutn.  Cum  autcm  aliqua  ex  ipsis,  attracta  ab  aliquo 
transeunte,  dormierit  cum  eo,  proximae  suae  exprobrat,  quod  ea 
non  sit  digna  habita,  sicut  ipsa,  neque  funis  ejus  disruptus  sit." — 
Chapter  VI,  42,  43,  of  Jerome's  Vulgate. 

"The  women,  also,  girded  about  with  cords,  sit  in  the  ways, 
burning  the  stones  of  olives.  But  when  one  from  themselves, 
having  been  drawn  away  by  some  passenger,  lieth  with  him,  she 
upbraideth  her  neighbour,  because  she  was  not  held  worthy,  like 
herself,  nor  had  her  cord  been  broken." — Translation. 

Baruch  wrote  about  a  century  before  Herodotos. 

Here  we  have  two  writers,  a  Greek  and  a  Jew,  who  could  have 
had  no  possible  connection  with  each  other  and  nothing  in  com- 
mon. There  is  no  reasonable  probability  that  Herodotos  had  ever 
heard  of  Baruch.  In  his  history  he  nowhere  mentions  the  Jewish 
nation.  It  is  true  that  the  German  Ewald  thinks  that  all  the 


IO6  HISTORICAL  MAN  OF  NAZARETH 

Book  of  Baruch  after  the  eighth  verse  of  the  third  chapter  was 
written  by  an  Alexandrean  Greek,  between  360  and  350  B.C., 
nearly  a  century  after  Herodotos  had  read  his  history  at  the 
Olympian  festival.  But  his  argument  is  an  example  of  peiitio 
principii.  If  the  Alexandrean  Greeks  wrote  all  that  the  destructive 
critics  attribute  to  them,  they  must  have  been  a  hive  of  busy  bees. 
If  they  wrote  so  much,  how  did  so  much  escape  the  burning  of 
the  Alexandrean  library?  There  is,  in  my  humble  judgment,  no 
doubt  of  the  genuineness  and  authenticity  of  the  Book  of  Baruch. 
Its  place  in  the  Canon  is  a  matter  of  dispute  between  Canterbury 
and  Rome  and  will  not  be  discussed  here. — W.  F.  B. 

NOTE  5. — The  entire  force  with  Leonidas  during  the  first  two 
days  of  the  fight  was,  probably,  about  7,000.  After  the  betrayal 
of  the  mountain  path  by  Ephilates,  many  of  the  allies  deemed 
discretion  the  better  part  of  valor  and  retired.  Between  .the 
divergent  accounts  of  Diodorus,  Herodotos  and  Pausanias,  it  is 
not  easy  to  determine  the  exact  number  of  fighting  men  that  re- 
mained. Excluding  Helots  and  Thebans,  there  were  300  Spartans 
and  700  Thesbians,  1,000  in  all.  Four  thousand  Greeks  perished 
during  the  entire  three  days'  fighting. — W.  F.  B. 

NOTE  6. — This  work  of  Bishop  Whately's  was  a  reductio  ad 
absurdum  and  was  a  reply  to,  or  rather  prose  satire  on,  David 
Hume's  Essay  on  Miracles.  Hume  is  a  philosopher  hard  to  an- 
swer, because  his  premises  are  the  basis  upon  which  every  rational 
man  acts  in  the  ordinary  affairs  of  life.  His  reasoning  has  the 
same  foundation  as  the  science  of  probabilities.  It  is  what  in- 
surance companies  act  upon;  experience  shows  that  one  house  in 
fifty  burns;  experience  shows  that  of  100,000  persons  ten  years 
old  of  equal  health  and  environment  749  will  die  the  first  year, 
746  the  second,  and  the  number  will  decrease  each  year  until  the 
twenty-fifth  year,  when  it  will  remain  stationary  four  years  at 
718,  then  the  annual  mortality  will  increase  till  at  the  end  of 
eighty-five  years  three  old  men  will  remain  at  the  age  of  ninety- 
five;  and  on  such  experience  is  based  the  value  of  the  risk. 
Hume's  reasoning  appealed  to  the  ordinary  mind  and  has  kept 
busy  doctors  of  divinity  for  more  than  a  century.  But  Whately 
stole  silently  into  his  citadel  and  spiked  every  gun.  While  Na- 
poleon was  living  prisoner  at  St.  Helena,  he  wrote  Some  Historic 
Doubts  Relative  to  Bounaparte.  He  follows  Hume's  reasoning 
with  great  exactness.  This  work  is  not  only  of  interest,  but  of 


NOTES  ID/ 

value;  and  it  is  strange  that  it  has  not  been  more  widely  read. — 
W,  F.  B. 

NOTE  1. — John  David  Michaelis,  a  German  biblical  scholar  of 
the  eighteenth  century,  has  given  an  ingenious  explanation  of  the 
defeat  of  Julian's  attempt  to  rebuild  the  temple  at  Jerusalem.  It 
was  suggested  by  a  passage  in  Tacitus,  History,  V.,  2,  12,  which 
speaks  of  subterranean  excavations  under  the  mountain  upon 
which  the  temple  was  built.  The  theory  of  Michaelis  is  that, 
during  the  293  years  between  the  destruction  of  the  temple  by 
Titus  and  the  attempt  to  rebuild  it  by  Julian,  flammable  gas  had 
generated  in  the  caverns ;  that  the  workmen  employed  by  Alypius, 
using  torches  for  exploration,  set  fire  to  this  gas.  Guizot,  in  a 
note  to  the  twenty-third  chapter  of  Gibbon,  elaborates  upon  this 
theory  of  Michaelis  and  apparently  approves  it;  he  cites,  in  sup- 
port of  its  probability,  the  experience  of  Herod  at  the  tomb  of 
David  described  in  Josephus,  Antiquities  of  the  Jews,  XVI.,  71. 
Milman,  apparently,  was  of  the  same  opinion  as  Guizot;  he  fol- 
lows him  with  a  less  elaborate  note  on  the  same  subject.  But 
Libanius  speaks  of  an  earthquake  which  accompanied  these  balls 
of  fire,  at  each  attempt  to  rebuild.  Now,  Libanius  was  a  pagan 
attached  to  Julian.  Chrysostom  says  that  the  balls  of  fire  came 
from  the  new  and  partially  constructed  walls.  If  either  state- 
ment is  correct,  Michaelis's  hypothesis  is  hardly  tenable.  I  have 
not  repeated  the  marvels  about  the  sign  of  the  cross  appearing  in 
heaven  and  upon  the  garments  of  the  workman.  No  writer  who 
relates  these  prodigies  was  an  eye-witness,  and  I  give  the  relation 
no  credit. — W.  F.  B. 

NOTE  8. — The  story  of  Julian's  death,  so  often  told,  is  too 
dramatic  to  be  true.  This  tale  and  the  statement  that  Count 
Volney  prayed  in  a  storm  on  Lake  Erie  are  two  stories  for  which 
I  have  been  unable  to  find  any  original  authority.  Like  the 
romance  on  the  death-bed  repentance  of  Paine,  the  Scotch  verdict 
is  the  limit  of  its  merits.  At  least  ninety-nine  of  a  hundred  die 
with  absolute  indifference.  The  historical  examples  of  Sokrates, 
Sir  Thomas  More,  Archbishop  Cranmer  and  Madame  Roland — 
pagan,  Catholic,  Protestant  and  freethinker — ought  to  convince 
one  that  a  man's  religion,  or  want  of  it,  has  little  to  do  with  the 
manner  in  which  he  meets  his  death.  The  latter  may  attest  his 
sincere  belief  in  the  former,  but  it  oftener  testifies  the  inherent 
force  of  human  nature  or  his  own  personal  fortitude.  A  religion 


IO8  HISTORICAL  MAN  OF  NAZARETH 

resting  on  no  firmer  basis  than  the  manner  in  which  any  number 
of  men  meet  death  is  a  structure  built  on  sand. — W.  F.  B. 

NOTE  9. — The  thirty  pieces  of  silver  received  by  Judas  were 
probably  either  thirty  tetradrachmas  or  thirty  Maccabean  shekels. 
If  the  former,  the  value  was  that  stated  in  the  text  The  value 
of  the  shekel  in  the  time  of  our  Saviour  would  place  the  equivalent 
of  thirty  of  these  at  $15.35.  The  argument  in  favor  of  the  shekel 
is  that  it  was  the  current  coin  among  the  Jews,  save  in  the  pay- 
ment of  Roman  taxes,  and  that  the  price  of  a  man  servant  was 
thirty  shekels.  Exodus  xxi.  32.  This  seems  like  a  small  price, 
but  the  purchasing  power  of  money  two  thousand  years  ago  and 
its  purchasing  power  in  this  age  stand  approximately  in  the  ratio 
of  100  to  1.  The  penny  (German  pfenning)  was  the  only  coin 
generally  current  among  the  ancient  Saxons. — W.  F.  B. 

NOTE  10. — The  monkey  theory  of  man's  origin  obtains  credit 
from  its  eccentric  novelty.  The  pea-like  excresence  on  the  rim 
of  the  human  ear  proves  that  man's  ears  were  once  peaked;  and 
the  vermiform  appendix  is  a  stomach  gone  into  bankruptcy.  Hence 
it  is  obvious,  not  only  that  man  was  once  a  prehensile  quadrumana, 
but  that  he  chewed  his  cud.  How  these  two  theories  can  be  rec- 
onciled, quere.  A  monkey  has  no  vermiform  appendix  or  any- 
thing that  answers  to  it 

The  Darwinian  theory  is  as  much  of  a  misnomer  as  was  the 
naming  of  the  western  continent  after  Americus  Vespucius.  The 
real  originator  of  the  theory  was  a  Frenchman  by  the  name  of 
John  Baptist  Peter  Anthony  de  Monet  de  Lamarck,  born  at 
Bazentin,  Picardy,  August  1,  1744,  died  at  Paris,  December  18, 
1829.  In  1809,  appeared  his  Philosophic  soologique.  In  this  book, 
Lamarck  elaborated  his  theory  of  the  development  of  animal  func- 
tions, hinted  at  in  an  earlier  work.  He  advanced  the  opinion  that 
new  organs  could  be  produced  in  animals  by  the  simple  exertion 
of  the  will,  called  into  action  by  new  wants;  and  the  acquired 
organs  could  be  transmitted  by  generation.  He  believed  in  spon- 
taneous generation,  a  theory  toward  whose  establishment  in  a 
century  of  time,  experimental  science  has  made  no  nearer  ap- 
proach than  is  expressed  in  Jacques  Loeb's  sea-urchins,  artificial 
fertilisation  and  chicken  incubators.  Darwin  had  the  advantage 
over  Lamarck  of  being  a  practical  chemist  and  a  master  of  detail. 
The  Lamarckian  theory  was  sufficiently  answered  by  Hugh  Miller 
in  his  Footprints  of  the  Creator.  But  now  comes  the  intervener, 


NOTES  lOQ 

a  very  reverend  sir,  with  an  answer  which  is  a  plea  in  confession 
and  avoidance.  The  idea  that  man  sprang  from  ape-like  species 
may  be  reconciled  with  the  Adamic  narration.  Man's  body  may 
have  been  made  before  his  soul,  and  the  soul  may  have  been 
added  and  man  thus  made  immortal. 

Formavit  igitur  Dominus  Dens  hominem  de  limo  terras,  et 
inspiravit  in  faciem  ejus  spiraculem  vitae;  et  factus  est  homo  in 
animam  viventem. — Genesis,  caput  II.,  7,  Jerome's  Vulgate. 

"Thereupon  God  formed  man  from  the  mud  of  the  earth,  and 
breathed  into  his  face  the  breath  of  life;  and  man  was  made  into 
a  living  soul." — Translation. 

The  theory  is  interesting,  but  it  is  timely  enough  to  ask  leave 
to  amend  and  file  this  plea  when  the  plaintiff  has  made  out  his 
case. 

Alas !  one  hundred  men  have  read  Darwin  to  one  that  has  read 
Miller.— W.  F.  B. 

NOTE  11. — Page  102. — Voltaire  himself  was  a  theist  and  not  an 
agnostic.  At  a  banquet  had  at  his  house,  d'Holbach  and  other 
atheists  were  combatting  the  existence  of  a  God,  when  Voltaire 
arose  and,  turning  all  of  the  servants  out  of  the  room,  locked  the 
door,  with  the  remark,  "I  would  not  have  my  valet  cut  my  throat 
before  tomorrow  morning."  In  his  philosophical  romance  Candide 
ou  I'Optimiste  he  makes  Pococurante  say  of  Cicero :  "I  found  he 
doubted  of  everything,  I  thought  I  ...  had  no  need  of  a 
guide  to  learn  ignorance."  Chapter  XXV. 

"Greece,  we  know,  was  the  country  of  fables,  and  almost  every 
fable  was  the  origin  of  a  doctrine,  of  a  temple,  and  of  a  public 
feast.  By  what  excess  of  madness,  by  what  absurd  obstinacy, 
have  so  many  compilers  endeavored  to  prove,  in  so  many  enormous 
volumes,  that  a  public  feast  established  in  commemoration  of  an 
event  is  a  demonstration  of  the  truth  of  that  event?  What,  be- 
cause young  Bacchus  is  celebrated  in  a  temple  issuing  from 
Jupiter's  thigh,  Jupiter  had  really  concealed  Bacchus  in  his  thigh  ? 
What,  Cadmus  and  his  wife  were  changed  into  serpents,  in  Boetia, 
because  the  Boetians  commemorated  such  an  event  in  their  cere- 
monies? Did  the  temple  of  Castor  and  Pollux,  at  Rome,  dem- 
onstrate that  these  gods  descended  upon  earth,  in  favor  of  the 
Romans?" — Voltaire,  Philosophy  of  History. 

But  these  arguments,  or  illustrations,  do  not  apply  to  the  Res- 
urrection. There  is  no  evidence  that  any  of  these  fables  were 
celebrated  immediately  after  the  events  were  alleged  to  have  taken 
place.— W.  F.  B. 


IIO  HISTORICAL  MAN  OF  NAZARETH 


DISSERTATION  ON  THE  PROTOTYPE  OF  JESUS 

AND  HIS  MESSENGER  TO  THE  GENTILES 

-THE  TRIAL  QF  CHRIST  CONTRASTED 

WITH  PAUL'S— JONAH  BAR  AMTTTAI 

There  is  one  story  in  the  Bible  which  has  been  chosen  to 
point  a  moral  or  adorn  a  tale.  In  the  estimation  of  the 
wit  or  the  philosopher  we  meet  in  the  public  luncheon- 
house,  the  story  of  the  prophet  and  the  great  fish  is 
the  Ultima  Thule  of  human  credulity;  and  a  preacher's 
standing  abreast  or  aback  of  "modern  thought" — abused 
phrase! — is  to  be  determined  by  his  exegesis  of  the  first 
two  chapters  of  the  Book  of  Jonah.  If  he  regards  the 
account  as  historical,  he  is  set  down  as  an  old  fogey  and 
retired  by  the  social  club  —  miscalled  a  church  —  over 
which  he  presides.  Now,  I  contend  that  this  story  can 
hardly  be  classed  as  a  miracle.  Pascal  defines  a  miracle — 
I  quote  from  memory — "An  event  exceeding  the  natural 
power  of  the  means  employed."  To  illustrate:  there  is 
nothing  in  human  spittle  mixed  with  clay  which  will 
cure  congenital  blindness.  Elisha  required  Xaaman  to 
bathe  in  the  Jordan,  but  natural  water  is  not  a  specific  for 
leprosy.  So  these  cures  can  be  classed  as  miracles.  On 
the  other  hand,  the  afflictions  visited  upon  the  patriarch 
of  Uz  were  hr  the  due  course  of  nature  and  human  his- 
tory. There  is  nothing  miraculous  about  a  hurricane  or 
a  band  of  robbers  or  the  black  erysipelas.  The  difference 
is  that  in  one  case  God  employs  natural  and  the  other 
supernatural  means.  These  two  terms — natural  and  su-  ' 
pernatural — are  simply  names  for  our  ignorance.  There 
is  some  force  in  Rousseau's  objection  that  we  can  not 


JONAH  AND  PAUL  III 

point  out  an  apparent  miracle  as  an  infraction  of  natural 
law  till  we  know  all  the  laws  of  nature.  While  the  writer 
was  an  official  in  the  state  house  of  Nebraska,  the  work- 
men about  the  building  were  in  the  habit  of  moving  across 
the  carpets  with  shuffling  feet  and  then  lighting  a  gas 
jet  with  the  index  finger.  On  one  occasion,  they  em- 
ployed this  means  to  be  rid  of  a  negro  employee.  The 
poor  boy  fled  from  the  building  in  horror  at  what  he 
regarded  as  demoniacal  magic.  It  was  a  miracle  to  him. 
But  how  much  ahead  of  that  boy  is  Thomas  A.  Edison — 
except  in  the  domain  of  purely  relative  knowledge.  The 
boy  called  his  ignorance  witchcraft;  Edison  calls  his 
electricity.  But  to  return  to  Jonah:  here  is  the  biblical 
narrative : 

"Now  the  word  of  the  Lord  came  unto  Jonah  the  son  of 
Amittai,  saying,  Arise,  go  to  Nineveh,  that  great  city,  and  cry 
against  it,  for  their  wickedness  is  come  up  before  me.  But  Jonah 
rose  up  to  flee  unto  Tarshish  from  the  presence  of  the  Lord,  and 
went  down  to  Joppa ;  and  he  found  a  ship  going  to  Tarshish :  so 
he  paid  the  fare  thereof,  and  went  down  into  it,  to  go  with  them 
unto  Tarshish  from  the  presence  of  the  Lord.  But  the  Lord  sent 
out  a  great  wind  into  the  sea,  and  there  was  a  mighty  tempest  in 
the  sea,  so  that  the  ship  was  like  to  be  broken.  Then  the  mariners 
were  afraid  and  cried  every  man  unto  his  god,  and  cast  forth  the 
wares  that  were  in  the  ship  into  the  sea,  to  lighten  it  of  them. 
But  Jonah  was  gone  down  into  the  sides  of  the  ship;  and  he  lay 
and  was  fast  asleep.  So  the  shipmaster  came  to  him,  and  said 
unto  him,  What  meanest  thou,  O  sleeper?  Arise,  call  upon  thy 
God,  if  so  be  that  God  will  think  upon  us,  that  we  perish  not. 
And  they  said  every  one  to  his  fellow,  Come,  and  let  us  cast  lots, 
that  we  may  know  for  whose  cause  this  evil  is  upon  us.  So  they 
cast  lots,  and  the  lot  fell  upon  Jonah.  Then  said  they  unto  him. 
Tell  us,  we  pray  thee,  for  whose  cause  this  evil  is  upon  us ;  What 
is  thine  occupation  ?  and  whence  comest  thou  ?  what  is  thy  coun- 
try? and  of  what  people  art  thou?  And  he  said  unto  them,  I  am 
an  Hebrew ;  and  I  fear  the  Lord,  the  God  of  heaven,  which  hath 
made  the  sea  and  the  dry  land.  Then  were  the  men  exceedingly 


112  HISTORICAL  MAN  OF  NAZARETH 

afraid,  and  said  unto  him,  Why  hast  thou  dene  this?  For  the 
men  knew  that  he  fled  from  the  presence  of  the  Lord,  because 
he  had  told  them.  Then  said  they  unto  him,  What  shall  we  do 
unto  thee,  that  the  sea  may  be  calm  unto  us?  for  the  sea  wrought 
and  was  tempestuous.  And  he  said  unto  them,  Take  me  up,  and 
cast  me  forth  into  the  sea ;  so  shall  the  sea  be  calm  unto  you :  for 
I  know  that  for  my  sake  this  great  tempest  is  upon  you.  Never- 
theless the  men  rowed  hard  to  bring  it  to  the  land ;  but  they  could 
not:  for  the  sea  wrought,  and  was  tempestuous  against  them. 
Wherefore  they  cried  unto  the  Lord,  and  said,  We  beseech  thee, 
O  Lord,  we  beseech  thee,  let  us  not  perish  for  this  man's  life,  and 
lay  not  upon  us  innocent  blood:  for  thou,  O  Lord,  hast  done  as 
it  pleased  thee.  So  they  took  up  Jonah,  and  cast  him  forth  into 
the  sea:  and  the  sea  ceased  from  her  raging.  Then  the  men 
feared  the  Lord  exceedingly,  and  offered  a  sacrifice  unto  the  Lord, 
and  made  vows.  Now  the  Lord  had  prepared  a  great  fish  to 
swallow  up  Jonah.  And  Jonah  was  in  the  belly  of  the  fish  three 
days  and  three  nights.  Then  Jonah  prayed  unto  the  Lord  his  God 
out  of  the  fish's  belly,  And  said,  I  cried  by  reason  of  mine  afflic- 
tion unto  the  Lord,  and  he  heard  me ;  out  of  the  belly  of  hell  cried 
I,  and  thou  heardest  my  voice.  For  thou  hadst  cast  me  into  the 
deep,  in  the  midst  of  the  seas;  and  the  floods  compassed  me 
about:  all  thy  billows  and  thy  waves  passed  over  me.  Then  I 
said,  I  am  cast  out  of  thy  sight;  yet  I  will  look  again  toward  thy 
holy  temple.  The  waters  compassed  me  about,  even  to  the  soul : 
the  depth  closed  me  round  about,  the  weeds  were  wrapped  about 
my  head.  I  went  down  to  the  bottoms  of  the  mountains;  the 
earth  with  her  bars  was  about  me  for  ever :  yet  hast  thou  brought 
up  my  life  from  corruption,  O  Lord  my  God.  When  my  soul 
fainted  within  me  I  remembered  the  Lord :  and  my  prayer  came 
in  unto  thee,  into  thine  holy  temple.  They  that  observe  lying 
vanities  forsake  their  own  mercy.  But  I  will  sacrifice  unto  thee 
with  the  voice  of  thanksgiving :  I  will  pay  that  that  I  have  vowed. 
Salvation  is  of  the  Lord.  And  the  Lord  spake  unto  the  fish,  and 
it  vomited  out  Jonah  upon  the  dry  land." 

This  account  is  referred  to  by  Jesus  Christ  in  the  fol- 
lowing manner: 

"An  evil  and  adulterous  generation  seeketh  after  a  sign;  and 
there  shall  no  sign  be  given  to  it,  but  the  sign  of  the  prophet 


JONAH  AND  PAUL  113 

Jonas  :  for  as  Jonas  was  three  days  and  three  nights  in  the  whale's1 
belly :  so  shall  the  Son  of  Man  be  three  days  and  three  nights 
in  the  heart  of  the  earth." — Matthew,  xii.,  39,  40;  see  also  Luke, 
xi.,  29. 

Some  people  have  claimed  that  the  story  of  Jonah  and 
the  fish  was  taken  from  Arion  and  the  dolphin.  To  show 
that  there  is  little  of  similarity  between  the  two,  I  subjoin 
the  tale  of  Arion  taken  from  Herodotos: 

"Now  Periander  was  king  of  Corinth,  and  the  Corinthians  say 
(and  the  Lesbians  confirm  their  account)  that  a  wonderful  prodigy 
occurred  in  his  lifetime.  They  say  that  Arion  of  Methymna,  who 
was  second  to  none  of  his  time  in  accompanying  the  harp,  and 
who  was  the  first  that  we  are  acquainted  with,  who  composed, 
named,  and  represented  the  dithyrambus  at  Corinth,  was  carried 
to  Taenarsus  on  the  back  of  a  dolphin.  They  say  that  this  Arion, 
having  continued  a  long  time  with  Periander,  was  desirous  of 
making  a  voyage  to  Italy  and  Sicily,  and  that  having  acquired 
great  wealth,  he  determined  to  return  to  Corinth ;  that  he  set  out 
from  Tarentium  and  hired  a  ship  of  certain  Corinthians,  because 
he  put  more  confidence  in  them  than  in  any  other  nation,  but  that 
these  men,  when  they  were  in  the  open  sea,  conspired  together  to 
throw  him  overboard  and  seize  his  money,  and  he,  being  aware 
of  this,  offered  them  his  money,  and  entreated  them  to  spare  his 
life.  However,  he  could  not  prevail  upon  them;  but  the  sailors 
ordered  him  to  either  kill  himself,  that  he  might  be  buried  ashore, 
or  to  leap  immediately  into  the  sea.  They  add  that  Arion,  re- 
duced to  this  strait,  entreated  them,  since  such  was  their  deter- 
mination, to  permit  him  to  stand  on  the  poop  in  his  full  dress 
and  sing,  and  he  promised  when  he  had  sung  to  make  away  with 
himself.  The  seamen,  pleased  that  they  should  hear  the  best 
singer  in  the  world,  retired  from  the  stern  to  the  middle  of  the 
vessel.  They  relate  that  Arion,  having  put  on  his  robes,  and  taken 
his  harp,  stood  on  the  rowing  benches  and  went  through  the  Or- 
thian  strain;  that,  when  the  strain  was  ended,  he  leaped  into  the 
sea,  as  he  was  in  his  full  dress,  and  the  sailors  continued  their 
voyage  to  Corinth :  but  they  say  that  a  dolphin  received  him  on 
his  back  and  carried  him  to  Taenarus ;  and  that  he,  having  landed, 

'The  original  Greek  is  kStos — seamonster. — W.  F.  B. 
8 


114  HISTORICAL  MAN  OF  NAZARETH 

proceeded  to  Corinth  in  his  full  dress,  and  upon  his  arrival  there 
related  all  that  had  happened;  but  that  Periander  giving  no  credit 
to  his  relation,  put  Arion  under  close  confinement,  and  watched 
anxiously  for  the  seamen ;  that  when  they  appeared,  he  summoned 
them  and  inquired  if  they  could  give  any  account  of  Arion;  but 
when  they  answered  that  he  was  safe  in  Italy,  and  that  they  had 
left  him  flourishing  at  Tarentium :  Arion  in  that  instant  appeared 
before  them,  just  as  he  was  when  he  leaped  into  the  sea;  at  which 
they  were  so  astonished  that,  being  fully^convicted,  they  could  no 
longer  deny  the  fact.  These  things  are  reported  by  the  Corin- 
thians and  Lesbians ;  and  there  is  a  small  brazen  statue  of  Arion 
at  Taenarsus,  representing  a  man  sitting  on  a  dolphin."- -Book 
1,  23,  24,  Cory's  Translations  from  Bachr's  Text. 

Lykophron's  account  of  Herakles'  adventure  is  un- 
doubtedly taken  from  Jonah.  Born  at  Cholkis  in  Euboea, 
Lykophron  lived  at  Alexandrea  from  285  to  247  B.C. 
This  was  during  the  reign  of  Ptolemy  Philadelphus,  at 
the  time  the  Septuagent  translation  of  the  Old  Testament 
into  Greek  was  completed,  and  it  is  as  easy  to  see  where 
his  story  of  Herakles  came  from,  as  it  is  to  see  that  De- 
foe got  his  prototype  of  Robinson  Crusoe  from  the  story 
of  Peter  Serrano  in  Gascilasco's  History  of  Peru. 

Now  what  have  we  here?  A  man  in  Palestine  re- 
ceives a  divine  command  to  go  to  Nineveh,  but  to  avoid 
the  commission,  he  starts  for  Spain.  He  ships,  paying 
his  fare  in  advance.  At  sea  the  ship  is  caught  by  a 
tempest.  The  passenger  sleeps  quietly  in  his  berth  till 
roused  from  slumber.  His  inward  consciousness  reveals 
the  cause  of  the  storm,  which  he  discloses  to  the  sailors, 
advising  them  to  heave  him  overboard.  We  may  ignore 
the  casting  of  lots  as  a  superstitious  device  of  no  signifi- 
cance. The  humane  sailors,  loath  to  commit  a  homicide, 
struggle  with  the  instinct  of  self-preservation  and  pull  for 
the  shore,  but  all  in  vain.  They  finally  consign  their 
passenger  to  the  deep.  He  is  swallowed  by  a  seamonster, 
but  after  three  days  is  disgorged  and  escapes. 


JONAH  AND  PAUL  115 

Now,  is  there  any  miracle  about  the  fish  section  of  this 
narrative  ? 

"Fish  large  enough  to  swallow  a  man  have  doubtless  been  found 
occasionally  in  the  Mediterranean  sea.  The  white  shark  swallows 
what  it  takes  into  its  mouth  whole.  It  is  physically  unable  to  di- 
vide its  food  piecemeal.  Otto  Fabricius  tells  us  its  wont  is  to 
swallow  down  dead  or  living  men  at  a  gulp.  In  1758  a  sailor  fell 
overboard  in  the  Mediterranean  sea,  when  a  shark  took  him  in 
his  wide  throat ;  but  the  captain  shot  the  shark  and  the  sailor  was 
rescued  from  his  perilous  condition  without  injury.  The  captain 
gave  the  man  the  fish,  which  was  exhibited  throughout  Europe. 
It  was  twenty  feet  long,  with  fins  nine  feet  wide,  and  it  weighed 
3,924  pounds.  Blumenbach  [teacher  of  the  great  Humboldt] 
makes  mention  of  a  white  shark  which  weighed  10,000  pounds; 
and  tells  us  that  horses  have  been  found  whole  in  these  monsters 
of  the  deep.  A  writer  of  the  seventeenth  century,  on  the  Fish  of 
Marseilles,  says  that  men  of  Nice  assured  him  they  once  took  a 
fish  of  the  Canis  Carcharias  family,  4,000  pounds  in  weight,  in  the 
belly  of  which  a  man  whole  was  found." — Dr.  Pusey,  Minor 
Prophets. 

Is  the  fact  that  Jonah  remained  alive  for  twenty-six 
hours,  which  would  be  three  days  according  to  the  an- 
cient reckoning — any  more  remarkable  than  a  case  of 
premature  burial  and  resuscitation? 

The  learned  writer  in  the  Jewish  Encyclopedia  thinks 
the  story  of  Jonah  an  allegory.  His  literary  judgment 
is  entitled  to  great  respect.  To  that  writer  the  word  of 
Jesus  Christ  is  nothing;  to  me  it  is  everything. 

SAUL   OF   TARSUS. 

Since  the  Ides  of  March,  B.C.  44,  no  man  has  lived 
whose  career  has  left  such  an  impress  on  the  drama  of 
the  world's  history  as  the  one  whose  name  is  at  the  head 
of  this  section.  Throughout  the  world  there  are  spots 
sacred  by  association.  Sinai,  Carmel,  Thermopylae,  St. 
Helena  suggest  the  names  of  Moses,  Elijah,  Leonidas 


Il6  HISTORICAL  MAN  OF  NAZARETH 

and  Napoleon.  Who  can  even  see  on  the  map  the  little 
ten-mile  island,  with  the  form  of  an  hour-glass,  which 
stands  like  a  time-keeping  sentinel  in  the  passage  between 
Pamlico  and  Albemarle  Sounds,  without  thinking  of  Vir- 
ginia Dare  and  Jennings  Wise?  The  isle  of  Malta  will 
be  longest  remembered,  not  because  it  shelters  the  lineal 
descendants  of  Hannibal,  or  because  it  was  once  the 
home  of  the  Knights  of  St.  John,  but  because  it  was  the 
scene  of  Paul's  shipwreck,  described  in  Acts  xxvii. 

It  is  not  the  purpose  to  write  the  life  of  the  great 
apostle  to  the  Gentiles.  Were  such  the  case,  the  mate- 
rials are  few.  Of  the  men  who  have  done  the  most,  we 
know  the  least.  Sosigenes,  who  marks  an  era  in  chro- 
nology— who  was  he?  Echo  answers  "Sosigenes."  Alas! 
We  know  not  if  he  be  Greek  or  Egyptian.  We  can  not 
tell  where  or  when  he  was  born.  All  we  know  of  his 
life  is  from  two  short  references  in  the  Historia  Naturalu 
of  the  Elder  Pliny.  But  we  do  know  that  he  proposed  a 
calendar  which  with  one  amendment  has  endured  to  this 
hour,  and  which,  like  the  Monroe  Doctrine,  has  borne  a 
Maverick  brand — the  Julian  calendar.1  Fortunately  the 
great  apostle  to  the  Gentiles  was  attended  during  a  por- 
tion of  his  career  by  an  industrious  and  observant  Syrian 
Boswell,  who  has  preserved  the  record  Acts,  and  given 
us  in  the  third  synoptic  the  Gospel  as  preached  by  Paul. 
We  know  that  Paul  was  born  at  Tarsus — when  we  can 
not  say;  that  he  was  educated  at  Jerusalem,  where  he 
had  a  married  sister;  that  some  extraordinary  event 
turned  him  from  a  persecuting  Pharisee  to  a  zealous 
Christian ;  then  we  have  his  career  as  written  in  the  Acts 
up  to  two  years  after  his  arrival  in  Rome.  There  are 

*It  is  now  evident  that  Sosigenes,  even,  was  not  the  author. 
The  decree  of  Canopus — now  in  the  museum  at  Cairo — shows  that 
the  principle  was  known  in  Egypt  238  B.C. — W.  F.  R. 


JONAH  AND  PAUL  117 

thirteen  of  his  epistles  of  undoubted  authenticity.  In 
II  Corinthians,  xi,  24-27,  we  have  a  part  of  his  career 
summarised.  Vague  tradition  is  not  infallible,  but  we 
may  feel  sure  that  Paul  visited  Spain;  and  that  he  was 
beheaded  at  Rome.  A  Jew  once  said  to  the  writer, 
"Christianity  would  never  have  been  heard  of  but  for 
Paul."  I  replied,  ''What  excellent  judgment  Jesus  Christ 
showed  in  picking  him  out !"  Paul  was  deeply  versed  in 
Jewish  law,  but  there  is  no  reason  to  think  that  he  pos- 
sessed the  classic  attainments  commonly  attributed  to 
him.  He  possessed  a  most  consummate  knowledge  of 
human  nature.  He  would  have  made  a  statesman  of  the 
first  order.  ,  When  he  got  the  Sadducees'  and  Pharisees 
into  a  quarrel  in  the  tumult  in  Jerusalem  he  showed  as 
much  tact  as  did  Gaius  Julius  Caesar  in  playing  off 
Pompey  against  Cassius  in  the  Luca  conference.  In  the 
opening  speech  at  Mars  Hill  he  is  as  tactful  as  Chester- 
field could  have  made  it.  Put  in  modern  parlance,  it 
would  read,  "Gentlemen  of  Athens,  I  see  that  in  all  things 
you  are  eminently  devout.  For,  as  I  passed  along,  and 
saw  your  devotions,  I  discovered  an  altar  with  this  in- 
scription: To  the  unknown  God.  Him  whom  you  wor- 
ship— without  fully  knowing  him — I  have  come  to  ex- 
plain to  you."  He  had  their  ear  at  once.  Then  follows 
as  clear  an  exposition  of  the  grandest  conception  of  pure 
theism,  invincible  ignorance  and  moral  accountability  to 
be  found  in  any  language.  Paul  was  an  orator,  perhaps 
not  as  ornate  as  Burke  or  Tully,  but  fit  to  rank  with  Julius 
Caesar  in  concise  forcefulness,  judging  by  the  compari- 
son of  what  we  find  in  the  Acts  of  the  Apostles  and  Sal- 
lust,  Bellum  Catilinarium. 

The  address  to  Festus,  Agrippa  and  Bernice  is  a  gem. 
What  Agrippa  meant  by  saying  "in  a  little,  thou  per- 
suadest  me,"  whether  he  was  polite,  serious  or  ironical, 


Il8  HISTORICAL  MAN  OF  NAZARETH 

or  whether  Paul  himself  understood  him,  I  do  not  know, 
but  I  do  know  that  never  was  a  quicker  turn  made  than 
was  made  in  the  reply.  I  can,  in  my  mind's  eye,  see  the 
prisoner  of  two  years  standing,  his  eyes  shining  like  dia- 
monds, facing  luxury,  power,  ease  and  refinement:  "I 
would  to  God  that,  both  in  little  and  in  much,  not  only 
thou  but  those  who  hear  could  this  day  become  altogether 
as  I  am,  [holding  his  manicled  hands  above  his  head] 
except  these  chains." 

To  the  fact  that  Paul  could  truthfully  utter  the  talis- 
manic  words  civis  romanus  sum,,  we  owe  the  spread  of 
Christianity  over  the  Roman  world.  And  now  let  us 
compare  the  trial  of  Christ  with  the  trial  of  Paul  and 
draw  a  lesson  therefrom. 

Christ  was  arrested  a  little  after  midnight  by  a  posse 
and  dragged  before  the  high  priest.  A  person  who  wishes 
to  know  what  a  mockery  of  justice  this  trial  was  should 
read  Rosadi's  book.  It  will  suffice  to  say  here  that  a 
space  of  less  than  fifteen  hours  is  crowded  with  his  ar- 
rest, his  indictment,  two  changes  of  venue,  his  acquittal, 
his  crucifixion  by  lynch-law  and  his  death.  Why? 
He  was  a  provincial.  Had  Paul  been  a  provincial,  he 
would  have  fared  no  better. 

But  how  is  it  with  Paul?  In  danger  of  a  mob,  he  is 
delivered  by  the  commander  of  the  castle  of  Antonia, 
who  proceeded  to  try  him  on  the  strength  of  his  nerves, 
when  Paul  informed  him  that  he  was  a  Roman  citizen. 
Paul  is  forthwith  sent  to  Caesarea  with  a  military  escort 
of  470  men  to  Felix.  Here  the  pettifogger  Tertullus 
appeared  against  him,  and  he  was  detained  in  prison  two 
years — habeas  corpus  was  not  invented — till  brought  be- 
fore Felix's  successor,  when  the  following  brief  dialogue 
took  place: 


JONAH  AND  PAUL  119 

Paul:     "Caesarem  afello." 

Festus :    "Caesarem  afpellastif    Ad  Caesarem  ibis." 

And  Paul  was  sent  to  Rome  at  government  expense. 

You  will  search  history  in  vain  for  a  more  glaring  con- 
trast than  is  exhibited  in  the  treatment  of  Christ  and  of 
Paul.  There  can  never  be  any  true  liberty  without  ab- 
solute equality  before  the  law.  Americans  take  warning. 
Your  danger  is  in  the  occult  and  insidious  dry  rot  of 
judicial  interpretation. 

On  the  fourteenth  day  of  August,  1889,  a  federal  judge 
was  traveling  between  Los  Angeles  and  San  Francisco, 
with  a  deputy  United  States  marshal  as  an  escort.  At 
Lathrop  they  got  off  the  train  for  breakfast.  They  were 
seated  at  the  table,  when  a  disappointed  litigant,  who  had 
killed  his  man  in  a  duel  and  knocked  out  the  tooth  of  a 
United  States  marshal,  approached  the  judge  from  be- 
hind and  slapped  him  alternately  on  the  side  and  back  of 
the  head  as  an  old-fashioned  pedagogue  would  slap  an  un- 
ruly school  boy.  The  deputy  marshal  sprang  to  his  feet 
and  ordered  him  to  stop.  Turning  his  attention  from 
judge  to  deputy  marshal,  the  assailant  started  to  thrust  his 
hand  into  his  own  bosom,  as  if  to  draw  a  bowie-knife, 
when  the  deputy  marshal  fired  two  shots  into  his  body, 
killing  him  instantly.  No  rational  man  can  do  otherwise 
than  justify  this  killing.  But  this  is  not  the  question.  As 
Gaius  Julius  Caesar  said  in  his  discussion  of  the  case  of 
the  Catilinarian  Conspirators: 

"All  precedents  productive  of  evil  have  had  their  origin  from 
what  was  good." 

The  deputy  marshal  was  arrested  under  a  process  sued 
out  of  a  justice  court  of  San  Joaquin  county.  The  deputy 
marshal  in  turn  sued  out  a  writ  of  habeas  corpus  from 
the  federal  circuit  court,  and,  upon  hearing,  was  dis- 


I2O  HISTORICAL  MAN  OF  NAZARETH 

charged.  39  Federal  Reports,  833.  On  appeal  to  the  Su- 
preme Court  of  the  United  States,  the  judgment  below 
was  affirmed.  The  decision  attracted  little  attention  at 
the  time.  The  man  who  was  killed  deserved  his  fate; 
the  deputy  marshal  deserved  his  liberty:  and  what  boots 
it  how  it  was  obtained?  It  is  by  just  such  carelessness 
that  men  are  robbed  of  their  rights  and  nations  of  their 
liberties.  The  decision  was  by  a  divided  court.  The 
majority  opinion  was  upon  the  ground  that  in  traveling 
from  one  session  of  court  to  another  the  federal  judge 
was  engaged  in  the  performance  of  the  duties  of  his  of- 
fice; that,  while  so  engaged,  he  wras  under  federal  pro- 
tection ;  that  the  deputy  marshal  did  nothing  but  his  duty 
in  the  line  of  his  office,  and  could  not  be  called  to  answer 
before  a  State  court.  The  effect  of  the  decision  is  to 
create  two  classes  of  people  in  this  country  of  ours,  one 
under  federal  jurisdiction,  and  the  other  under  state: 
one  set  that  can  appeal  to  Caesar,  like  Paul,  even  before 
trial ;  and  the  plebeians  or  pariahs  who  are  amenable  to 
the  State  tribunals.  No  sophistry  will  avoid  this  con- 
clusion. If  a  federal  judge  is  engaged  in  official  business 
when  moving  from  one  session  of  court  to  another,  he 
is  so  engaged  when  writing  an  opinion  or  studying  a 
case;  ergo,  a  deputy  marshal  can,  with  impunity,  break 
the  heads  of  offending  .urchins  who  make  a  noise  on  the 
streets  and  disturb  the  cogitations  of  his  honor.  This 
official  can  police  the  city  within  earshot  of  the  judge 
and  supersede  the  municipal  jurisdiction.  I  quote  from 
the  dissenting  opinion  in  this  case: 

"If  the  act  of  Terry  had  resulted  in  the  death  of  Mr.  lustice 
Field,  would  the  murder  of  him  have  been  a  crime  against  the 
United  States?  Would  the  government  of  the  United  States,  with 
all  the  supreme  powers  of  which  we  hare  heard  so  much  in  this 
discussion,  have  been  competent  to  prosecute  in  its  own  tribunals 


JONAH  \AND  PAUL  121 

the  murder  of  its  own  Supreme  Court  Justice,  or  even  to  inquire 
into  the  heinous  offense  through  its  own  tribunals?  If  yes,  then 
the  slaying  of  Terry  by  the  appellee,  in  the  necessary  prevention 
of  such  an  act,  was  authorised  by  the  law  of  the  United  States, 
and  he  should  be  discharged;  and  that,  independently  of  any  offi- 
cial character,  the  situation  being  the  same  in  the  case  of  any  citi- 
zen. But  if  no,  how  stands  the  matter  then?  The  killing  of  Terry 
was  not  by  authority  of  the  United  States,  no  matter  by  whom 
done;  and  the  only  authority  relied  on  for  vindication  must  be 
that  of  the  State,  and  the  slayer  should  be  remanded  to  the  State 
courts  to  be  tried.  The  question  then  recurs,  Would  it  have  been 
a  crime  against  the  United  States?  There  can  be  but  one  answer. 
Murder  is  not  an  offense  against  the  United  States,  except  when 
committed  on  the  high  seas  or  in  some  port  or  harbor  without 
the- jurisdiction  of  the  State,  or  in  the  District  of  Columbia,  or  in 
the  Territories,  or  at  other  places  where  the  national  government 
has  exclusive  jurisdiction.  The  United  States  government  being 
thus  powerless  to  try  and  punish  a  man  charged  with  murder,  we 
are  not  prepared  to  affirm  that  it  is  omnipotent  to  discharge  from 
trial  and  give  immunity  from  any  liability  to  trial  where  he  is 
accused  of  murder." — In  re  Neagle,  135  U.  S.  1,  98,  99. 

The  majority  did  hold  that  in  a  case  where  they  could 
not  convict,  they,  without  the  aid  of  a  jury,  could  acquit. 
This  decision  is  most  vicious  in  principle  and  will  be 
most  vicious  in  its  results.  It  was  a  flagrant  act  of  judicial 
despotism. 


THE  HISTORICAL  MAN  OF  NAZARETH 

BY  WILBUR  F.  BRYANT 
JACOB  NORTH  &  CO. 

The  Historical  Man  of  Nazareth  supports  the  historic  charac- 
ter of  the  Gospel  narratives,  and  answers  various  objections,  not 
only  with  an  ability  which  carries  conviction,  but  with  an  acute 
logic  which  entertains  while  it  instructs. — Chancellor  Huntington. 

Bryant  is  a  man  of  deep  study  and  literary  attainments.  His 
logic  is  sound  and  his  arguments  convincing. — Maurice  Ripperger, 
O.  F.  M.  Rector  St.  Francis  de  Sales  Church. 

I  was  very  much  impressed  by  the  learned  and  scholarly  at- 
tainments of  the  author.  The  Historical  Man  of  Nazareth  is  a 
most  interesting,  instructive,  and  skilful  treatment  of  the  Life  of 
Christ  from  an  historical  standpoint. — Rev.  Michael  A.  Shine, 
Rector  Pro-Cathedral,  Lincoln. 

The  author  has  treated  in  a  masterly  manner  one  of  the  great- 
est dogmas  of  our  religion.  He  possesses  the  rare  ability  of  mak- 
ing himself  understood  by  all  classes  of  people. — George  Agius, 
D.D.,  Chancellor  of  the  Diocese  of  Lincoln. 

"The  Historical  Man  of  Nazareth"  is  the  ideal  book  for  the 
University  man. — Arthur  F.  Mullen. 

I  have  subscribed  for  a  copy  of  "The  Historical  Man  of  Naza- 
reth," because  I  think  it  worth  reading. — William  Jennings  Bryan. 


AMONG  THE  SUBSCRIBERS  FOR  THIS  BOOK  ARE 

GEORGE  LAWSON  SHELDON,  Governor  of  Nebraska. 

ELISHA  BENJAMIN  ANDREWS,      Chancellor  of  University. 
JASPER  L.  McBRIEN,       Superintendent  of  Public  Instruction. 

DOCTOR  SHERMAN, 

Professor  of  English  Language  and  Literature. 
With  the  corps  of  State  Officers  and  Faculty  of  the  University. 


DC  SOUTHERN  REGIONAL  LIBRARY  FACILITY 


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